Continuous Quality Improvement Initiative

GETTING STARTED

When you consider starting a quality improvement (QI) program it is easy to get overwhelmed and not know where to begin. This 'starter kit' of tips, advice and tools is intended to ease you into the process. Before you know it, you'll be doing it! There are a couple of concepts you need to know to get started.

Introduction

QI is intended to be a process used by individuals, healthcare teams, or healthcare systems to improve the care delivered to patients. The focus is on improving:

• the procedures by which care is delivered
• the selection of healthcare services delivered
• the quality of healthcare delivered, or
• the monitoring of healthcare services.

Quality improvement projects can focus on the individual physician/provider or on the healthcare team. The new maintenance of certification (MOC) requirements of the American Board of Radiology (ABR) requires each time-limited certified diplomate must participate annually in the components and competencies of MOC at a pace that accomplishes steady progress toward the fulfillment of the ten-year requirements by the cycle end. Please see http://theabr.org/moc/ for specifics relating to your certification. 

There are two major categories of QI projects:

• Patient safety projects are directed at preventing adverse events.
• Quality improvement projects are aimed at improving healthcare services and/or procedures.

There are five major steps to any QI project:

• Identify the target of improvement--what exactly are you trying to accomplish?
• Measure the size of the problem or the current level of performance
• Identify areas of vulnerability where things can go off track or quality can suffer
• Design and implement an intervention (a change) that addresses these vulnerabilities
• Measure the current performance again.

If improvement is observed, then the intervention should become embedded in the policies and procedures of the healthcare organization. You may wish to design another intervention to improve the target process even further. Episodic measuring can track the level of performance over time and help you determine whether the improved performance has been sustained.

If no improvement was noted, analysis and discussion should lead to another intervention being selected and tested by repeating the QI process.

Use the links on the right to begin to learn more about the QI process.