Quality improvement
Test small changes. Prove the big result.
Understand the problem, plan the changes and test them in cycles, with the chart beside every test. Your team sees what's working while there's still time to change course.
every test sits beside the chart that measures it
Is it better, or just a good month?
Stop guessing from a bar chart.
SPC charts mark real shifts and trends for you, with nine chart types and the right one suggested from your data. Nobody needs a statistics course to read them.
Now
"June looks better than May!"
…then July drops and everyone panics.
is it the change, or the weather?
With Prep Medics
Discharged before midday
p chart · Ward 4
A real shift: 12 weeks in a row above the average
The method, built in
Understand. Plan. Test.
The tools improvement teams already know, linked together so each step builds on the last.
1 · Understand
Find the real causes
A fishbone with the team, starting from contributory factors or the classic six. Star the key causes and carry them into your plan.
2 · Plan changes
Agree what to try
A driver diagram links your aim to the change ideas worth testing, and shows which are being tried, adopted or dropped.
Aim
70% of discharges before midday
-
Ready the day before
- Letter on admission Adopted
- Criteria-led discharge Testing
3 · Test
Learn in cycles
Each PDSA cycle records the prediction, what happened and what you learnt. Finishing one asks whether it moved your measures.
Tied to your objectives
See who else is testing the same idea.
Your organisation's objectives carry their own driver diagrams. Every project testing a change idea shows up under it, so wards learn from each other instead of starting from scratch.
- Start a project straight from a change idea, already linked
- Counts of projects per idea, driver and aim, without double-counting
- Private projects are counted, never named
three wards, one idea, one place
What it's worth
Your result, in the language of the board.
Say what the project should change: bed days, falls, nurse hours, medicines. Prep Medics prices it with published national unit costs, keeps estimated and verified apart, and adds it to the hospital's totals.
Bring a quality improvement project you're running now.
we'll set it up with your chart and your first cycle