How Do You Know . . .

A set of questions to ponder:

How do you know when you have successfully built a robust and sustainable Hospital Quality Program? How should "program" be defined in this context? How does a hospital determine when they have a comprehensive program in place versus disparate and broken processes. Do we have a national measure or metric that is easily portable and instructive across large and small hospitals? In the market place, how can a payer, a consumer, a provider, or a patient evaluate Hospital A from Hospital B and discern which has a better program, rather than comparative process measures such as: beta blockers at arrival and smoking cessation counseling? Furthermore, how does an organization (or for that matter the marketplace) measure the competence, the effectiveness, and success of a Director of Quality Management, a Vice President of Quality, or an executive of performance improvement?

-soft on people, hard on processes