What is the likely outcome, and why? Infection rates will not change because the leaders have not changed the system of care.

A basic principle of improvement is that every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets. When an error occurs in a complex system — and health care is a complex system — one can reasonably conclude that the system is still perfectly designed for that error, or one like it, to occur again.

Six Sigma. The essential goal of Six Sigma is to eliminate defects and waste, thereby improving quality and efficiency, by streamlining and improving all business processes.

What’s the main benefit of using change concepts to come up with improvement ideas? Using change concepts can help you develop specific improvement ideas that might not have occurred to you initially. You notice that it’s very easy to confuse medications at the community health center where you’re working.

How will we know that a change is an improvement? Actual improvement can only be proven through measurement. An organization should think about how it wants things to be different when it has implemented a change and agree on what data needs to be collected for measuring.

The principle of change realizes the economic and social forces that affect value. A diligent appraiser asks, “Is this community experiencing growth, stability, decline, or restoration?” In other words, the area the property is in will affect the value more than the property itself.

The Model for Improvement (MFI) provides a framework for developing, testing and implementing changes leading to improvement. The model provides an easily understandable scientific method which acts to moderate the impulse to take immediate action with the wisdom of careful study.

Quality improvement is focused on making processes better. The first step is finding your practice’s key problems. You then need to identify and prioritize potential change projects.

Quality Improvement is a systematic approach using specific methods to improve quality; achieving successful and sustained improvement. Ovretveit. 2. describes improvement as better patient experiences and outcomes achieved.

Top QI Tools and Methods

• Plan-Do-Check-Act and AIM statement. Sometimes referred to as Plan-Do-Study-Act, PDCA is a QI framework used to assess and improve strategies.
• Gantt chart. This tool lists the activities of a project in rows with start and end dates.
• Flowchart.
• Cause and effect diagram.
• Matrix diagrams.

Seven simple tools can be used by any professional to ease the quality improvement process: flowcharts, check sheets, Pareto diagrams, cause and effect diagrams, histograms, scatter diagrams, and control charts. (Some books describe a graph instead of a flowchart as one of the seven tools.)

Quality improvement tools are standalone strategies or processes that can help you better understand, analyze, or communicate your QI efforts. Examples of QI tools(www.ihi.org) include run charts, process maps, and fishbone diagrams (ihi.org(www.ihi.org)).

This section discusses four key steps in the planning stage of a PDSA cycle as part of a CAHPS-related quality improvement process:

1. Establish improvement goals.
2. Identify possible strategies.
3. Choose specific interventions to implement.
4. Prepare a written action plan.

The definition of quality improvement (QI) is, “Using data to monitor the outcomes of care processes and using improvement methods to design and test changes to continuously improve the quality and safety of health care systems” (QSEN, 2003).

Quality and safety in nursing is defined in the knowledge, skills and attitudes that are designed to be developed in pre-licensure programs for nursing.

Patient safety is the cornerstone of high-quality health care. Much of the work defining patient safety and practices that prevent harm have focused on negative outcomes of care, such as mortality and morbidity. Nurses are critical to the surveillance and coordination that reduce such adverse outcomes.

Quality has been defined by the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) as “doing the right thing at the right time for the right person and having the best possible result.” Patient safety is simply defined by the World Health Organization as “the prevention of errors and adverse effects to patients …

8 Healthcare Quality Improvement Tips

1. 1) Analyze your data and outcomes.
2. 2) Set goals.
3. 3) Create a balanced team.
4. 4) Include Human Factors Inputs.
5. 5) Create an executable plan.
6. 6) Become Familiar with the PDSA cycle.
7. 7) Communicate goals and progress.
8. 8) Research other organizations and collaborate.

Quality Improvement Programs: Four Key Components All successful quality improvement programs include four key components: the problem, goal, aim, and measures.

The Patient Safety Indicators (PSIs) are a set of 26 indicators (including 18 provider-level indicators) developed by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) to provide information on safety-related adverse events occurring in hospitals following operations, procedures, and childbirth.

The Top Six Things Nurses Can Do to Improve Patient Safety

1. Support a culture of safety. “The cultures of safety are essential in order for us to correct the issue of frequent error and harm,” McGaffigan said.
2. Communicate well.
3. Perform basic care and follow checklists.
4. Engage your patients.
5. Learn from incidents and near misses.
6. Get involved.