Читать книгу The Quality Improvement Challenge - Richard J. Banchs - Страница 79

Patients, providers, and staff are customers in our healthcare processes. They expect an outcome:

 The outcome must have certain attributes and must be delivered within certain requirements (VOC).

 The customer also defines the specifications for both the attributes and requirements of the final outcome.

Patients know what they mean when they say that something is “good.” Our job is to help translate their statement into specific attributes and requirement that can be measured, tracked, and improved.

The customer (patient, staff, or provider) defines quality by identifying the outcome, the attributes of the outcome, and the requirements that characterize the outcome. The customer also defines the specifications for both the attributes and the requirements.

Patients’ needs and expectations are at times vague and nondescriptive. Specificity is needed to address the identified gaps between our current performance and the needs of our customers. A method designed to focus on the critical issues needed to achieve customers’ satisfaction with the outcome involves developing Critical‐to‐Quality (CTQ) requirements, or CTQs.

The CTQs are key measurable characteristics of service or care whose performance standards or specifications must be met in order to satisfy the customer (see Figure 8‐3).

FIGURE 8‐3 The CTQs are the specifications of the Voice of the Customer

The CTQs translate general and difficult‐to‐measure customer needs or desires into very specific and measurable attributes and requirements of customer satisfaction. The CTQs are the quantifiable expectations of the customer.

Patient or customer needs and expectations come in all forms, shapes, and length of detail. Before we can move forward, these expectations need to be identified, organized, and understood. The CTQs help with this important task. The CTQs translate the broad needs and requirements of the customer (patients, staff, and providers), the VOC, into specific, actionable, and measurable performance attributes and requirements that provide direction for the project’s goals and activities.

Remember, improving a process and achieving patient or customer satisfaction are the underlying targets of the QI project. Developing CTQ requirements allows us to define the expectations of the customer (i.e. quality from the customer’s perspective), and set the goal and aims of the project. Once we understand what is critical for the customer, we can

 Define our current performance.

 Define the gap in performance and understand the magnitude of the problem.

 Set the scope for the project.

 Define the goals of the improvement initiative.

 Set the targets we need to achieve.

Because patients, providers, and staff are the customers of our healthcare processes, CTQs are the critical patients’ requirements, critical physicians’ requirements, or the critical staff’s requirements whose performance standards or specifications must be met in order to meet their expectations.