These indicators can be used by healthcare providers, policymakers, and researchers to assess the performance of healthcare systems and identify areas for improvement. Some common healthcare indicators include:
Articles
Flowchart
One Flowchart can replace a thousand words A Flowchart is a diagram that uses graphic symbols to depict the nature and flow of the steps in a process. At the beginning of your process improvement efforts, Flowchart helps you to understand how it currently works. You may compare this with the way the process is…
What could we learn from others?
Healthcare as a service is very complex, but it’s not necessarily different from other industries; for a better healthcare performance we could learn more from other industries and I believe that the industrial approaches have an important role to play in driving up healthcare quality. The Institute of Medicine in its report “Best Care at…
Medication Reconciliation
A shared patient safety problem worldwide is the lack of accurate and complete information about patients’ medicines when their care is transferred between healthcare settings. In up to two-thirds of patients there are variances between the medicines they take at home and the medicines ordered on admission to hospital. It has been estimated that around…
High Alert Medications
While any medication potentially can cause harm, a select group of drugs—high-alert medications (HAMs)—carries a higher risk of patient injury. Even when given correctly, these drugs carry a significant risk of causing harm. High–alert medications are drugs that have a high risk of causing significant patient harm when they are used in error. Although mistakes may or may not be…
Run Chart
A Run Chart is the most basic tool used to display how a process performs over time. It is a line graph of data points plotted in chronological order—that is, the sequence in which process events occurred. These data points represent measurements, counts, or percentages of process output. Run Charts are used to assess and…
Histogram
A Histogram is a vertical bar chart that depicts the distribution of a set of data. Unlike Run Charts or Control Charts, which are discussed in other modules, a Histogram does not reflect process performance over time. It’s helpful to think of a Histogram as being like a snapshot, while a Run Chart or Control…
Pareto Chart
A Pareto Chart is “a series of bars whose heights reflect the frequency or impact of problems. The bars are arranged in descending order of height from left to right. This means the categories represented by the tall bars on the left are relatively more significant than those on the right”. The chart gets its…
Nominal Group Technique
Nominal Group Technique, or NGT, is a weighted ranking method that enables a group to generate and prioritize a large number of issues within a structure that gives everyone an equal voice. The tool is called nominal because there is limited interaction between members of the group during the NGT process. When to use? When…
Multi-voting as a Team Decision Tool
Multivoting is a group decision-making technique used to reduce a long list of items to a manageable number by means of a structured series of votes. The result is a short list identifying what is important to the team. When to use? Reduce a large list of items to a workable number quickly, with limited…
Clinical Audit 6 Stages
The clinical audit process seeks to identify areas for service improvement, develop & carry out action plans to rectify or improve service provision and then to re-audit to ensure that these changes have an effect. The clinical audit can be described as a cycle or a spiral. Within the cycle, there are stages that follow…
Clinical Audit
Clinical audit is a quality improvement process that seeks to improve patient care and outcomes through systematic review of care against explicit criteria and the implementation of change”. The key component of clinical audit is that performance is reviewed (or audited) to ensure that what should be done is being done, and if not it…
Affinity Diagram
An Affinity Diagram is a tool that gathers large amounts of language data (ideas, opinions, issues) and organizes them into groupings based on their natural relationships. The Affinity process is often used to group ideas generated by Brainstorming. When to use? Sift through large volumes of data. For example, a process owner who is identifying…
Brainstorming
Brainstorming is a tool used by teams to bring out the ideas of each individual and present them in an orderly fashion to the rest of the team. The key ingredient is to provide an environment free of criticism for creative and unrestricted exploration of options or solutions When to use? Encourages creativity. It expands…
Patient Identification
The success of many treatments and activities within healthcare facilities depends on ensuring that correct patient identity has been established. Patient identification is an essential stage in care processes as there could be significant consequences if an error is made. Failure to correctly identify patients continues to result in medication errors, transfusion errors, testing errors, wrong person procedures, and…
Leadership Styles
A leader is a person who has a vision, a drive and a commitment to achieve that vision, and the skills to make it happen. While leaders set the direction, they must also use management skills to guide their team to the right destination in a smooth and efficient way. The old-fashioned view of leadership…
Manage Risk in 6 Steps
1- Identify Hazard 2- Who? 3- Analysis 4- Register 5- Action Plan 6- Re-assess 1- Identify Hazard what can go wrong? 2- Who? Who might be harmed and how ? 3- Analysis Evaluate the risks (how bad? how often?) 4- Register Record your ufb01ndings (Risk Register) 5- Action Plan Propose action and identify who is…
Team Development Model
Psychologist Bruce Tuckman published his “Forming Storming Norming Performing” model in 1965. This model describes the phases which teams tend to go through from their inception to the successful completion of the project. Forming a team takes time, and members often go through recognizable stages as they change from being a collection of strangers to a…
When The Winds Blow!
Once there lived a farmer who owned land along the seacoast. He constantly advertised for hired hands. Most people were reluctant to work on farms along the sea. They dreaded the awful storms that raged across the ocean – wreaking haw on the buildings and crops. As the farmer interviewed applicants for the job, he…
Healthcare Indicators – Effective Design
These indicators can be used by healthcare providers, policymakers, and researchers to assess the performance of healthcare systems and identify areas for improvement. Some common healthcare indicators include:
Healthcare Indicators
These indicators can be used by healthcare providers, policymakers, and researchers to assess the performance of healthcare systems and identify areas for improvement. Some common healthcare indicators include:
Reduce Patient Falls
Definitions Fall Loss of upright position that results in landing on the floor, ground or an object or furniture or a sudden, uncontrolled, unintentional, non-purposeful, downward displacement of the body to the floor/ground or hitting another object like a chair or stair. Slip Loss of balance as a result of slippery surface that does not…
Fish-bone Diagram
Fish-bone Diagram is a quality tool that identifies many possible causes for an effect or problem. It can be used to structure a brainstorming session. It immediately sorts ideas into useful categories, helps teams explore and display the causes contributing to a certain effect or outcome. It graphically displays the relationship of the causes to…
What is Quality?
Concerns for quality and process control is nothing new. Historians have traced the concept as far back as 3000 B.C. Process control is a concept that may have begun with pyramids of Egypt when a system for quarrying and dressing stone was designed. One has only to examine the pyramids at Cheops to appreciate this…