Improving Healthcare with Control Charts

Book excerpt: Do you feel you are drowning in a sea of data and wondering how you can learn from all of this information? While measuring quality efforts in healthcare is essential to the overall performance of any healthcare organization, it is also very complex, leaving many feeling overwhelmed and with a lot of unanswered questions: What are SPC methods and can they really help to improve healthcare? How can control charts be used to monitor key processes and outcomes? How can physicians use control charts to improve their clinical practice? In his latest book, Dr. Raymond Carey answers these questions and more as he helps to explain the need for, and the use of, SPC in healthcare. In Improving Healthcare with Control Charts: Basic and Advanced SPC Methods and Case Studies, Carey expands on his previous best-selling book, Measuring Quality Improvement in Healthcare, by providing more in-depth information on problems commonly experienced in constructing and analyzing control charts. He outlines specific SPC concepts, theories, and methods that will help improve measurement and therefore improve overall performance. Carey also presents many new case studies applying advanced methods and theory to real life healthcare situations.