Quality Enhancement Research Initiative

QUERI – Quality Enhancement Research Initiative

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Quality Improvement Methods

Research in healthcare involves changing processes and creating better ones. There has been much developed on how to assure quality and effectiveness when making changes in clinical and non-clinical settings. A broad variety of such improvement methods exist. This website provides information on some of the more widely used quality improvement (QI) methods or tools that a QUERI researcher may find useful.

Most of the improvement methods described in this website have a long history of their development and their literature. Some of these were initially developed by industries other than healthcare, but are applicable to healthcare nonetheless. Moreover, some of them are referred to by more than one name and, in some cases; different methods share the same label. The most common names used in healthcare are used here.

Further information will be needed to implement any of these methods but this website can be used as a starting point. The intent here is to give the researcher the basic idea and describe common uses of these methods. The exact approach for using the method varies by the practitioner using them or the institution where they are used.

This website does not include information on the following:

• Statistical analysis of data and testing of hypotheses. These are the methods needed by the clinical researcher when comparing outcomes of an intervention.
• Clinical research issues and specific clinical practice methods
• Finding available best clinical practices

Depending on the particular research proposed or the phase of research, the most useful set of methods will vary.

• TheQuality Improvement Methods Selection Tool asks for the attributes of your research project and based on that response, presents the methods which offer the most capabilities relevant to the research.
• Of course, the researcher is free to peruseall the QI methods because unique aspects of certain situations may be helped by any of these methods.
• This website also provides an example of how QI methods could be used in a QUERI project
• Furthermore, this website is available inHandbook form for downloading and printing.

We acknowledge the dedicated work of the following people in creating this website:

David Belson, PhD
Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Viterbi School of Engineering, University of Southern California

Lisa Rubenstein, MD, MSPH, Director
David Ganz, MD, PhD, Associate Director
Center for Implementation Practice and Research Support (CIPRS)

Please note that links to websites and other resources are not endorsements of the site, the organization, or content on those sites. They are provided to assist you in identifying potentially useful information, ideas, or additional resources.