Institute for Healthcare Improvement, Research Paper Example

It is valuable for health care organizations to implement several different tools in order to achieve quality improvement. One such tool, recommended by the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services, is the Simple Data Collection Planning (IHI Tool), which ensures that data gathered to assess the status of healthcare quality is accurate and reliable (U. S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2011). Furthermore, this application allows health care professionals to more effectively track quality improvement over time (Institute for Healthcare Improvement, n.d.). While this type of data tracking can be conducted without the use of this tool, this task is often less effective and time consuming, which has encouraged many hospitals to implement software of this king to track quality.

When displaying this quality improvement data to organizational members, it is important to present information in the form of a line graph to demonstrate changes over time. The purpose of quality improvement initiatives is to determine how an intervention or approach is impacting quality, so it is necessary to determine the relationship between this intervention and outcome over time. Furthermore, it may also be reasonable to present this information in the form of a bar graph when comparing quantities, such as the number of medical errors or falls within a certain period of time. A pie chart is also valuable for reporting the types of errors that have been made, which provides the audience with an understanding of procedures that should be put in place to avoid these high yield incidents. Overall, a combination of charts and graphs are needed to provide the staff with a complete picture of quality improvement success and needs as they occur over time.

References

Institute for Healthcare Improvement. (n.d.). Resources. Retrieved from   http://www.ihi.org/resources/Pages/default.aspx

S. Department of Health and Human Services. (2011). Managing Data for Performance Improvement. Retrieved from http://www.hrsa.gov/quality/toolbox/508pdfs/managingdataperformanceimprovement.pdf