An Introduction to Quantitative Aspects of Quality Improvement Science.

Overview

The use of quality improvement (QI) has become widespread in medicine to improve patient and process outcomes through the methodology of improvement science. Each project follows a format that includes precisely specifying an aim, drivers/barriers to achieving that aim, and potential change concepts/interventions. It is then necessary to define how the data will be collected and displayed and how the significance of the change due to the interventions will be assessed. In this article, we describe the quantitative methods to provide a framework for the performance and reporting of QI projects.