An approach to health care quality management borrowed from the manufacturing sector. It builds on traditional quality assurance methods by putting in place a management structure that continuously gathers and assesses data that are then used to improve performance and design more efficient systems of care. Also known as total quality management (TQM).
A continuous, systematic method of identifying, quantifying, and eliminating all forms of waste in work processes.
The use of date from “evaluation research” to make sure that mental health services and processes keep improving over time.
Programs and activities designed to constantly improve the safety and effectiveness of services.
A process to continuously make everything better each day. The initiative is customer focused and requires that processes be analyzed, measured, improved and evaluated on an ongoing basis.
A systematic, organization-wide approach for continually improving all processes involved in the delivery of quality products and services.
A management approach to improving and maintaining quality that emphasizes internally driven and relatively continuous assessments of potential causes of quality defects, followed by action aimed either at avoiding decrease in quality or else correcting it an early stage.
A key component of a total quality management (TQM), CQI uses rigorous, systematic, organization-wide processes to achieve ongoing improvement in the quality of products, services and operations, and the elimination of waste. CQI programs focus on both outcome and process of care.
Process of evaluating the performance of an operation against benchmarks or industry standards and applying this information to improve program operations.
A method used in industry to improve the quality of service. CQI usually includes 1. defining the problem, 2. intervening to change the problem, 3. measuring success.