Working as a physician involves not only providing the best possible care for the patients of today, but also working to improve care for the patients of tomorrow. Collecting and understanding data is central to both of these aims, as without information and data, a clinician has little to draw on to answer two fundamental questions: How am I and my team doing? What can we do to improve?
The aim of this toolkit is to help physicians to draw together the information that is necessary to understand the quality of care provided by their team, and to work to improve it. This toolkit is also designed to help physicians to draw together the data necessary to understand the local quality of care, measure that care and use the data to improve standards.
The toolkit includes:
- a description of the main types of data
- considerations of how they should (or should not) be interpreted
- how data can be used to help improve healthcare quality.