Health Care Quality Management: Tools and Applications introduces the student to the field and practice of quality management, provides hands-on experience with Excel and other tools, and shows how these principles are adopted by health care organizations to improve patient outcomes and program quality. Increasingly health care organizations are challenged to improve patient outcomes, redesign business processes and execute quality and risk management initiatives. The book includes case studies to illustrate how patient outcomes have been improved and business processes redesigned to achieve improvements in quality, risk reduction and other key business results/outcomes. The textbook is divided into three parts. The first section, chapters one through three, discuss the state of the health care system, quality pioneers, and quality systems. After reading the first three chapters the reader should understand the goal of quality management, the extent and causes of quality issues, and the challenges to restructuring the delivery system. Chapters four through ten demonstrate data analysis and investigative techniques. Chapter four introduces the reader to process analysis tools to identify issues and causes, select corrective actions, and monitor implemented solutions. Chapters six through eight introduce the use of statistical process control to monitor system performance (variables) and outcomes (attributes). These chapters, unlike other quality textbooks on the market, provide multiple data sets so students can practice the skills and tools discussed in the chapters and reviews examples of where and how the tools have been applied in health care. Chapters five and ten review root cause analysis and failure mode effects analysis. Chapters eleven through fifteen discuss clinical tools and applications that are used to improve patient care.
