Book: The Health Care Data Guide

Using data for learning and improvement in health care programs

Published: Wednesday, October 26, 2011 - 11:24

(Jossey-Bass/Wiley: San Francisco) -- The Health Care Data Guide, by Lloyd P. Provost and Sandra K. Murray (Jossey-Bass, 2011), is designed to help students and professionals build a skill set specific to using data for improvement of health care processes and systems. Even experienced data users will find valuable resources among the tools and cases that enrich The Health Care Data Guide. Practical and step by step, this book spotlights statistical process control (SPC) and develops a philosophy, strategy, and set of methods for ongoing improvement to yield better outcomes.

Provost and Murray reveal how to put SPC into practice for a wide range of applications, including evaluating current process performance, searching for ideas for improvement, determining evidence of improvement, and tracking and documenting sustainability of improvement. A comprehensive overview of graphical methods in SPC includes Shewhart charts, run charts, frequency plots, Pareto analysis, and scatter diagrams. Other topics include stratification and rational subgrouping of data, and methods to help predict performance of processes.

Illustrative examples and case studies encourage users to evaluate their knowledge and skills interactively and provide opportunity to develop additional skills and confidence in displaying and interpreting data.

Read the entire Chapter 1 here.

Chapter titles

Click here for a pdf of the complete table of contents.

Part I Using Data for Improvement
Chapter 1 Improvement Methodology
Chapter 2 Using Data for Improvement
Chapter 3 Understanding Variation Using Run Charts
Chapter 4 Learning from Variation in Data
Chapter 5 Understanding Variation Using Shewhart Charts
Appendix 5.1 Calculating Shewhart Limits
Chapter 6 Shewhart Chart Savvy: Dealing with Some Issues
Part II Advanced Theory and Methods with Data
Chapter 7 More Shewhart-Type Charts
Chapter 8 Special Uses for Shewhart Charts
Chapter 9 Drilling Down into Aggregate Data for Improvement
Part III Applications of Shewhart Charts in Health Care
Chapter 10 Learning from Individual Patient Data
Chapter 11 Learning from Patient Feedback to Improve Care
Chapter 12 Using Shewhart Charts in Health Care Leadership
Part IV Case Studies
Chapter 13 Case Studies Using Shewhart Charts
Shewhart Chart Selection Guide

About Provost and Murray

Lloyd P. Provost is a co-founder of Associates in Process Improvement, the developers of the Model for Improvement road map and the Quality as a Business Strategy template for focusing organizations on improvement. Provost is a senior fellow at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, where he supports the use of data for learning in programs.

Sandra K. Murray is a principal at Corporate Transformation Concepts, an independent consulting firm. She is on the faculty for the Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s year-long Improvement Advisor Professional Development Program and its Breakthrough Series College. Murray has taught numerous programs through the National Association for Healthcare Quality. Her active cohort of client organizations encompasses the spectrum of health care delivery.

About The Author

Wiley

Wiley is a global research and learning company. Through the research segment, the company provides scientific, technical, medical, and scholarly journals, as well as related content and services, for academic, corporate, and government libraries, learned societies, and individual researchers and other professionals. The publishing segment provides scientific, professional development, and education books and related content, as well as test preparation services and course workflow tools, to libraries, corporations, students, professionals, and researchers. In solutions, Wiley provides online program management services for higher education institutions, and learning, development, and assessment services for businesses and professionals.