Quality and Performance Management Flashcards
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
The health services research arm of the US Department of Health and Human Services; the lead federal agency for research on healthcare quality, costs, outcomes, and patient safety.
Balanced scorecard
A framework for displaying system-level performance measures; a component of a structured performance management system that aligns an organization’s vision and mission with operational objectives.
Benchmarking
Comparison of one’s own organization with other companies to learn about potential best practices.
Case managers
Experienced healthcare professionals (e.g., doctors, nurses, social workers) who work with patients, providers, and insurers to coordinate medically necessary and appropriate healthcare services.
Charter
A written declaration of an improvement team’s purpose.
Clinical paths
Descriptions of key patient care interventions for a condition, including diagnostic tests, medications, and consultations, which, if completed as described, are expected to produce desired outcomes.
Clinical practice guidelines
Systematically developed statements that help practitioners and patients make decisions about healthcare to be provided in specific clinical circumstances.
Continuous quality improvement
Analyzing performance of various processes and improving them repeatedly to achieve quality objectives.
Core measure project
A performance measurement project sponsored by The Joint Commission.
Data analytics
The science of examining raw data with the purpose of drawing conclusions about that information.
Discharge planning
Evaluation of patients’ medical and psychosocial needs for the purpose of determining the type of care they will need after discharge from a healthcare facility.
Eight types of waste (muda) eliminated during Lean projects
Movement, waiting, overprocessing, defects, inventories, transportation, design, overproduction.
Evidence-based measures
Data describing the extent to which current best evidence is used in making decisions about patient care.
Failure mode and effects analysis
Systematic assessment of a process to identify the location, cause, and consequences of potential failure for the purpose of eliminating or reducing the chance of failure; also called failure mode, effects, and criticality analysis and healthcare failure mode and effects analysis.
Fishbone diagram
Graphic representation of the relationship between outcomes and the factors that influence them; sometimes called an Ishikawa or cause-and-effect diagram.
Flowchart
Graphic representation of a process.
Hazard analysis
The process of collecting and evaluating information on hazards associated with a process.
High-reliability organization
An entity or business with systems in place that are exceptionally consistent in accomplishing goals and avoiding potentially catastrophic errors.
Lean
A performance improvement approach aimed at eliminating waste; also called Lean manufacturing or Lean thinking.
Malcom Baldrige National Quality Award
A recognition conferred by the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program to US organizations demonstrating performance excellence.
Medically necessary
Appropriate and consistent with diagnosis and, according to accepted standards of practice in the medical community, imperative to treatment to prevent the patient’s condition or the quality of the patient’s care from being adversely affected.
Pareto chart
A special type of bar graph that displays the most frequent problem as the first bar, the next most frequent as the next bar, and so on; also called Pareto diagram.
Peer review
Review of professional performance by professionals with similar training and experience.
Performance expectations
The minimum acceptable or desired level of quality.
Quality
Perceived degree of excellence.
Quality assurance
Evaluation activities aimed at ensuring compliance with minimum quality standards; used interchangeably with quality control to describe actions performed to ensure the quality of a product, service, or process.
Quality management cycle (three activities)
Measurement, assessment, and improvement.
Quality planning
Setting quality objectives and specifying operational processes and related resources needed to fulfill the objectives.
Rapid cycle improvement
An improvement model that supports repeated incremental improvements in a practice to optimize performance.
Risk analysis
The process of defining, analyzing, and quantifying the hazards in a process, which typically results in a plan of action undertaken to prevent the most harmful risks or minimize their consequences.
Root cause analysis
A structured process for identifying the underlying factors that caused an adverse event.
Sentinel event
An adverse event involving death or serious physical or psychological injury (or the risk thereof) that signals the need for immediate investigation and response.
Six quality aims (Institute of Medicine)
Healthcare that is safe, effective, patient centered, timely, efficient, and equitable.
Six Sigma
A disciplined methodology for process improvement that deploys a wide set of tools following rigorous data analysis to identify sources of variation in performance and ways of reducing the variation; Six Sigma quality is a rate of fewer than 3.4 defects per 1 million opportunities (i.e., the process is 99.99966 percent defect free).
Stakeholder analysis
A tool used to identify groups and individuals who will be affected by a process change and whose participation and support are crucial to realizing successful outcomes.
Standards
Performance expectations established by individuals or groups.
Statistical process control
The application of statistical methods to identify and control performance.
Utilization review
A process for monitoring and evaluating the use, delivery, and cost-effectiveness of healthcare services.
