Quality Improvement Resources

Any team that wants to effectively improve DFIs at its institution should understand the basics of effective implementation and improvement. Having an improvement framework sketched will dramatically enhance a team’s chances of realizing breakthrough improvement. At least 1 or 2 hospitalists in your group should become very familiar with the general framework for improvement and with proven quality improvement (QI) tools. Medical center resources — such as a patient safety officer, a QI leader, or a QI facilitator — may be available at your institution. You should identify these individuals and enroll them in your cause at the earliest stages.

TASKS

• Identify in-hospital QI resources.
  
  
• Review the slide presentation on Quality Improvement Theory in the QI Basics section.
  
  
• Get more information on a few key tools at the Web sites listed in Web Resources to Enhance Working Familiarity with Key QI Tools.
  There are many tools for QI. Each tool has particular strengths for use at different points in the improvement process. A few are particularly important and are useful in almost every project. Process flow mapping is an important step in designing or redesigning a process to make it more efficient and reliable. Process flow mapping also lends itself to producing protocols and clinical algorithms and is essential to identifying where things can go wrong, either informally or more formally by failure modes effect analysis (FMEA). We also consider run charts as nearly essential because they help the team follow and communicate progress toward its goals. We recommend having a working familiarity with these tools, either by the in-house expert or by the hospitalists who are (or will become) your improvement team resources. You can find more in-depth information on these (and other tools) at the locations listed in the QI Basics Section.