How Do You Know You Are Getting Better? Use Data To Drive Improvement

The best quality improvement initiatives are driven by data! Why? How are you going to know how much you have improved if you don’t measure something?
All of you have been exposed to measures in many situations. Most of them were important. In school, you were graded. Perhaps you own shares of stock; how do you measure the success of the stock—its increase in value, a measurement. How do you know if your team wins? By its score, a measurement. The fact is that many daily activities in life have accompanying measures to judge their success.
You might argue that you know if things are getting better; you can just tell. I am sure that you can. This is not enough, though. In the healthcare field it is important to measure improvement. One reason to do so is to pr View the rest of this article