The statistical analysis of healthcare quality data is an important requirement for accreditation by the Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO). To this end, many healthcare organizations take part in the Maryland Hospital Association's Quality Indicator Project.

In order to be effective, systems for analyzing quality should be based on statistical process control (SPC). SPC, which is recommended by the JCAHO, is a set of statistical tools that used to implement the Deming philosophy of management. With SPC, subjectivity is removed from management decisions by allowing the data to drive decision-making. Also, the need to reduce cost in any healthcare system is an additional incentive for the use of SPC. As a basis for continuous improvement, SPC has been used for years in manufacturing organizations. SPC can also be applied very effectively in healthcare organizations. Data from healthcare systems that can be analyzed with simple SPC tools include: in-patient & out-patient care, surgical procedures, pharmacies and laboratories, patient surveys, and diagnostic screening and imaging. This workshop is designed for a variety of decision-makers, including administrators, providers (physicians, nurses), quality and risk managers, health insurers (private, government), clinical technologists and managers, and regulators. The SPC tools presented in the session can be understood and applied with an understanding of only basic high-school mathematics.

• Understand Deming's management philosophy and the benefits of process-oriented thinking
• Learn about the nature and collection of data, and understand the importance of studying variation in outcomes over time
• Generate and interpret run charts, histograms, and summary measures
• Learn to design and implement control charting procedures, such as proportion (P) control charts, using MS-Excel
• Understand how a system for performance benchmarking can be developed using P charts in conjunction with statistical confidence intervals
• Develop an understanding of the "process" of SPC for use in analyzing Maryland Project Quality Indicator data, as well as other quality measures