Close
Dr. Khalid Abulmajd
Follow me for updates
Focus on the Vital Few… and Transform Patient Care
In healthcare, we deal with endless data — incident reports, complaints, infection rates, medication errors, delays, and patient feedback. But here’s the truth: not all problems are equal.
Some issues, if fixed, can eliminate the majority of recurring troubles in your system. That’s where the Pareto Chart becomes a game-changer.
This simple visual doesn’t just show you where problems exist — it shows you where to start.
A Pareto Chart is a special type of bar chart that helps you identify which problems have the greatest impact.
Each bar represents a category (e.g., cause of an incident, source of delay, type of infection), and the bars are arranged from tallest to shortest — so your biggest issues are on the left.
It’s based on the Pareto Principle, or the 80/20 Rule, which suggests that 80% of the problems come from 20% of the causes.
In healthcare terms:
80% of patient complaints may come from 20% of service areas.
80% of medication errors may come from 20% of steps in the dispensing process.
80% of infection cases may result from 20% of procedures or wards.
That’s the power of focus.
In busy hospitals and clinics, resources are always limited — time, staff, and budget. So, trying to fix everything at once is unrealistic.
The Pareto Chart helps you:
✅ Prioritize problems — Identify where action will make the biggest impact.
✅ Target root causes — Narrow down which areas need immediate attention.
✅ Engage teams visually — Everyone can see what matters most.
✅ Track progress — Re-draw the chart after interventions to see if the pattern changes.
Imagine you’re analyzing patient falls in a hospital:
You list all contributing factors — slippery floors, lack of handrails, poor lighting, medication side effects, etc.
After plotting the data, you find that 70% of falls are due to just two causes: slippery floors and missing handrails.
By focusing your resources there, you can dramatically reduce incidents instead of spreading efforts thin.
That’s the Pareto effect in action.
Use it any time you’re dealing with data that can be grouped into categories — for example:
Types of patient complaints (communication, waiting time, billing, attitude, etc.)
Causes of medication errors
Sources of hospital-acquired infections
Delays in discharge or surgery start times
Incident report categories (falls, pressure injuries, specimen mislabeling, etc.)
Whether you’re at the start of your quality improvement journey or deep into root-cause analysis, the Pareto Chart helps direct your team’s focus toward what matters most.
Collect Data: Start with a clear, reliable dataset — incident logs, audit results, or complaint records.
Categorize the Data: Group by type, cause, or department.
Count the Frequency: How many times did each issue occur?
Sort from Largest to Smallest: Biggest problem first.
Plot the Bars: Each bar = one category.
Add a Cumulative Line (Optional): This shows how quickly the top issues add up to 80% of the total.
Interpret: Focus on the “vital few” (the tall bars on the left). These are your leverage points.
Imagine your hospital recorded 200 medication errors over three months.
After categorizing them, you get:
Wrong dose: 80
Wrong time: 50
Omission: 40
Documentation error: 20
Wrong patient: 10
Plotting these on a Pareto Chart shows that wrong dose and wrong time account for 65% of all errors.
That insight helps your quality and pharmacy teams design targeted interventions — like double-checking high-risk medications or revising timing protocols.