I love this Quality Improvement stuff! No "mistakes", just "learning opportunities"! And I had a big one 2 weeks ago. Yup, learned something up real good.
While Karen was out of town, I thought I'd try some number crunching on my own. Turns out that stuffing the wrong data into Excel and hitting the Chart button doesn't make you Nobel material. Who knew? Also, you're apparently supposed to "analyze" the data with "statistical techniques" rather than just eyeballing it and then going ballistic. In your blog. That anyone in the world can read.
In "Throw me a bone," I groused about our time to 3rd next available appointment starting to rise again, according to this graph:
Now check out this next chart (thanks, Karen). This is the actual situation. We're not losing ground on 3NAA – so far, it looks like normal variation. Variation is expected in any system and, as it’s within the control limits, our system is stable. We haven’t seen a significant change either way yet.
I gather we'd like to see the line drop below the lower control limit to show we've made a significant change in the system. Or exceed the upper limit in the case of this graph:
Our request for pooled referrals has made a significant change. We have a new, stable system.
I’ll start posting the 3NAA chart updates regularly. Just looking at the raw data chart made me think there was a downward trend, but I’ve learned my lesson. Raw data can be deceiving – that’s why it’s great to have science behind quality improvement as a reality check.
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