Measurement for Improvement Resources

Quality and Patient Safety Data for Decision Making Toolkit

• Quality and Patient Safety Data for Decision Making Toolkit contains tools, resources and guidance to develop a Quality Agenda Item for Boards, Committees and Leadership Teams.

The Quality and Patient Safety Data for Decision Making Toolkit contains four parts:

Part one helps you plan and test your quality agenda item using quality improvement (QI) and co-design methodologies.

Part two contains tools and resources to support you developing a Quality Profile and to produce and interpret statistical process control and run charts.

Part three contains guidance on developing patient, service user, family and staff ‘stories’ or experiences to share at committee, board and leadership team meetings.

Part four contains useful resources to gather feedback and evaluate your project.

 Quality and Patient Safety Data for Decision Making Case Studies and Publications

Read about how data and people's stories were used in QI projects to support Boards in the role of overseeing quality and its improvement

• Quality and Patient Safety Data for Decision Making Case Study; Co-Designing the Quality Agenda with the HSE Leadership Team describes the quality improvement and co-design methodologies that were used to iteratively develop a Quality Agenda with the HSE leadership team.
• 'Board on Board with Quality of Clinical Care' Quality Improvement project describes the development of a Quality Agenda with the Board of the Mater Misericordiae University Hospital
• 'Bringing the Board of Directors on Board with Quality and Safety of Clinical Care describes the development of a Quality Agenda with the Board of Children’s Health Ireland at Temple Street Children's University Hospital
• Board Level ‘Picture-Understanding-Action’: A New Way of Looking at Quality International Journal of Health Governance. Martin, J., Flynn, M.A., Khurshid, Z., Fitzsimons, J., Moore, G., and Crowley, P. outlines our QI approach to enhancing the “Picture” and “Understanding” of quality to lead to better “Action(s)” from board members, committees and leadership teams. 
• Applying a New Approach to the Governance of Healthcare Quality at Board Level This paper describes how we applied the “Picture-Understanding-Action” approach our QI project to improve oversight of quality at national board level using SPC methods complimented by a qualitative experience of patients and frontline staff

Effective measurement framework

The 7 steps for effective measurement for improvement: This document outlines the 7 steps and associated tasks to generate and use data effectively for improvement. It is helpful to ensure you don’t forget any key steps.

Glossary

Measurement for Improvement Glossary: This document presents a glossary of measurement for improvement terms. It is recommended you consult the glossary to familiarise yourself with the technical terms we use in all our resources.

Guidance for choosing your measures:

• Prioritising Measures of Quality of Care checklist  This checklist helps you in developing or choosing measures (single measures / KPIs or families of measures) to understand the quality of care.
• Measurement Plan template This tool describes the rationale behind choosing a measure, the type of measure, the relevant definitions and how to collect and present the measure, to ensure that a team has clarity on all aspects of measurement being carried out.

Guidance for analysing and presenting your data:

• Guide on using measurement for improvement methods This resource provides guidance on how to present your data, including how to create run charts.
• Excel template for creating a 'C' chart  This document is an Excel template for creating an SPC “C” chart.
• Excel template for creating a Run ChartThis document is an Excel template for a Run chart.
• Excel template for 8 SPC charts This is a template that allows calculation of 8 SPC charts, including the special cause. The template is in testing, available beta version. Two videos are also available to support the use of the template: basic and advanced. An updated version including 10 charts also available in beta version.
• Some 'Do's and Don'ts' of measurement This document includes examples of some of the common mistakes people make inadvertently when dealing with measurement and best practices.

Guidance on surveys and qualitative data:

• Guidance on how to use and analyse surveys  Surveys are an effective way to quickly gather information and data when you are seeking feedback on a particular topic, fact and information about people or their knowledge, attitudes or opinions about something. This document offers guidance on designing, conducting, analysing and presenting surveys.
• Introduction to qualitative methods The presentation covers what Qualitative Research is and the differences between qualitative and quantitative approaches to research and evaluation, including methods such as interviewing, focus groups, observation and documentary analysis and briefly addresses approaches to analysing qualitative data.

There are additional resources you can consult on LENUS, the Irish Health Repository https://www.lenus.ie/ . Please use the key search term QPSIntelligence (no space) to locate our resources timely.

QI self-evaluation guide and workbook:

• QI Self-Evaluation Guide This guide for self-evaluation and accompanying workbook has been developed to support teams who wish to evaluate their QI projects.
• QI Self-Evaluation Workbook Editable templates to support your self evaluation

Podcast

Listen to our podcast episode on QPS data for decision making and how data can be used for assurance and improvement: Walk and Talk Improvement Podcast: Using data to improve