Scientifically based process improvement in health care with statistical process control

Abstract

Background: For better performance, it is crucial to continuously improve quality and patient safety based on the science of quality and patient safety and the usage of appropriate tools such as statistical process control. The aim of this article is to describe statistical process control in the continuous improvement of healthcare processes.Methods: Patient falls and surgical site infections were studied using a run chart, u-chart, and g-chart.Results: In the case of patient falls special causes of variation were depicted.However, these are only statistical conclusions, whereas the content of the causes can be found only by those who work in the process of fall prevention.In the case of surgical site infection, the use of a new wound covering material was abandoned because the g-chart showed failure to improve the process. The g-chart showed that a different type of preparation of the surgical site with hair cutting instead of shaving showed a decrease in infection rates.Conclusion: Statistical process control can differentiate between common and special causes of process variability. The importance of this distinction is in the employment of different strategies for process improvement.

Keywords

• quality improvement
• patient safety
• statistical process control