Using Control Charts to Interpret Healthcare Data

1. Understanding variation and its importance
2. Simple graphing techniques:
1. Histograms and run charts
3. Choosing the right control chart
1. The most useful control chart — the Individuals chart
2. Interpreting control charts
3. Use of 3-sigma limits: when they do and do not apply
4. Profiling hospitals, doctors etc. with the Xbar and s chart for rational subgroups
5. Selected healthcare applications from case studies
4. Monitoring blood pressure measurements for an individual patient
1. Turnaround times for CBCs
2. Surgery time

Day Two

5. Process capability — knowing the extent of variability for evaluating processes
6. Use of the probability plot
1. The need for transforming data which are not normally distributed, and how to do it
2. The analysis of rare events such as nosocomial infections
7. Attribute charts for time-ordered data and for profiling
1. The c and u charts for count data such as falls
2. Mortality rates and similar applications using p charts
8. Healthcare applications selected from:
1. Decreasing anesthesia narcotics discrepancies
2. Missing medications: New pathway improvement
3. Patient falls
4. C-sections
5. Decreasing the medication error rate
6. Acute appendicitis: Ultrasound predictive errors
7. Acute appendicitis: Perforation rates by surgeon
8. Surgery times: Transformations
• Decreasing the nosocomial MRSA infection rate
• Reducing surgical site infections
• Surgery complications with new cost savings pathway
• Benchmarking time to extubation after CABG surgery
• Case studies brought in by participants

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