In a recent blog post, Ben Sawyer of Care Logistics discusses how continuous quality improvement (CQI) requires a radical change in thinking for hospitals.
Editor's Note: This blog originally appeared on The Health Care Blogs' website.
For decades, automakers, the packaging industry and the airline industry have created better products, improved processes and greatly increased user satisfaction by adopting the principles of CQI—which, simply put, means constantly looking at our processes and asking ourselves, “Can we do it better”?
CQI principles have been applied to the delivery of healthcare with great success. Hospitals have created and employed myriad mechanisms for all staff members/personnel to continually improve existing processes. But hospital leaders and administrators know that even after decades of dutifully applying the principles of CQI to improving delivery of care, the patient’s journey from admission to discharge is still all too often filled with missed opportunities for a speedier journey through the system and better care overall.
Administrators at leading hospitals are finding that, in some cases, CQI means adopting an entirely new model of delivery. They are also finding that the most efficient way to deliver care is also the most patient-friendly. Let me explain.