Quality Improvement – The Science of Making Care Better for All

by Arif Kamal (@arifkamalmd)It seems everywhere a person turns, there ’s nonstop discourse regarding healthcare quality, particularly the relationship of meeting quality metrics to demonstrating lower costs and higher value. As palliative care further immerses itself into usual healthcare delivery, it behooves our workforce to adeptly apply quality improvement skil ls to translate our sense of “what is right” into the usual practice of “what is done.” Meeting these demands takes skills and practice, rooted in an evolving evidence base around quality improvement science.It may confuse some to hear that quality improvement is derived from science. For some, quality improvement is what you call things when there ’s not grant money, not a protocol or consent, the project is not publishable or meaty enough to face the feedback or scrutiny of your peers, or when there’s a high likelihood of failure. Quality improvement and “pilot” study can sometimes seem synonymous, and it’s certainly the former an d not the latter when results are negative or there’s “more to learn.”In fact, quality improvement is just as time and resource intensive as pure research, a reflection of rigor that started from the very beginning. The formative years of quality improvement science originated from the factory setting, where observers painstakingly monitored outcomes at the individual and systems level, quantified opportunities for improvement at the outcome (number of widgets)...
Source: Pallimed: A Hospice and Palliative Medicine Blog - Category: Palliative Care Tags: conference kamal quality Source Type: blogs