Chapter 11. Measuring Success
An integral part of quality improvement is
measuring the impact of improvement activities. Doing so demonstrates whether
you are moving toward your vision and accomplishing your priorities. At this
time, the six Better Quality Information sites do not have formalized measures
for determining their success. However, they do use informal methods of gauging
stakeholder satisfaction and measuring the coalition's effectiveness.
Massachusetts Health Quality Partners, for
instance, measures its success in how many stakeholders want to continue
participating in the coalition. In addition, the Massachusetts coalition has
anecdotal information from the physician community on how it uses the
coalition's data to encourage physicians or to create improvement projects.
Consequently, one network has included a session in its annual meeting on how
to improve the coalition's reports. The amount of positive press coverage the
coalition receives and the number of press releases the media pick up also
validate that people are paying attention to the Massachusetts Health Quality
Partners' work.
The Massachusetts coalition also measures
success through the amount of research funding it receives from outside the
State and brand recognition, which is calculated by how many people know what
"Massachusetts Health Quality Partners" or "MHQP" is and what it does. Finally,
the coalition has research efforts underway to understand how practices use
aspects of its data.
For the Center for Health Information and
Research, because it is an academic research group, it measures success in
funding secured through grants and contracts for service, its delivery of
community reports to the Arizona community, and scholarly publications.
Return to Contents
Proceed to Next Section