Quality Indicators to Improve Patient Care

What is a Quality Indicators ?  A quality indicator is a periodic measurement of an aspect of clinical practice that can be used to drive improvement.  A quality indicator will normally relate to one or more of the following:  Infrastructure  Process  Outcome  The UK concept of quality embraces:  Clinical Outcome  Safety  Patient Experience

Measurement – The big idea?  Always been part of good personal practice  World Health Organisation  Organisation for Social & Economic Development  Lord Kelvin applied by Lord Darzi to NHS  “You can’t be sure to improve what you can’t measure”

“The difference between a well- performing health system and one that is failing can be measured in death, disability, impoverishment, humiliation and despair.” The World Health Organisation World Health Report 2000

Counter Argument “Not all that counts can be counted and not all that can be counted, counts.” Albert Einstein

Neonatal WMQI To ensure that:  we only count what counts  we count what is most important first  we only count what can be counted  we always count what we mean to count  what is counted is always counted in the same way  we only count once  we make what we count, count