Measuring success for health care quality improvement interventions.
BACKGROUND
The lack of a standard measure of quality improvement (QI) success and the use of subjective or self-reported measures of QI success has constrained efforts to formally evaluate QI programs and to understand how the various contextual factors impact QI success.


OBJECTIVE
The objective of this study was to assess how best to measure "QI success" by comparing self-reported and externally rated measures of QI success.


METHODS
We performed a retrospective evaluation that analyzed data on different measures of QI success for organizations after their staff completed the QI training.


METHODS
The sample included 30 organizations whose staff had received QI training during 2006-2008, and who had used this training to carry out at least some subsequent QI initiative in their organizations.


METHODS
We developed 2 measures of self-reported QI success based on survey responses and 4 externally rated measures of QI success based on outcome data provided by the participating organizations in addition to qualitative data generated from the interviews.


RESULTS
We found some variation in the mean scores of the different QI success measures and only moderate to small correlations between the self-report and externally rated QI measures.


CONCLUSIONS
This study confirms that there are important differences between self-reported and externally rated measures of QI success and provides researchers with a methodology and criteria to externally rate measures of QI success.
RAND Corporation, Pittsburgh, PA, USA. kmorgant@rand.org
Kristy G
KG
Morganti
Susan
S
Lovejoy
Amelia M
AM
Haviland
Ann C
AC
Haas
Donna O
DO
Farley
D006298:Health Services Administration / Q000592:standards*; D006801:Humans; D007318:Inservice Training / Q000458:organization & administration*; D058996:Quality Improvement / Q000592:standards*; D019984:Quality Indicators, Health Care; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D057566:Self Report