Data Collection & Analysis
Providing the best health care requires documenting what is actually being done for patients and comparing this documentation to evidence-based clinical guidelines for similar patients.
A systematic review of a small number of patient records can yield vital information on the actual quality of care being provided.
Data may be collected in various ways: paper forms, by manually reviewing patient records, or by generating electronic reports from practice management software, client registries and/or electronic medical records.
Tips for data collection for healthcare improvement:
- Data collection must be easy
- Build data collection into the practice being improved
- Collect only useful data
- Keep the amount of data to a minimum
- Minimize potential for errors
- Use the improvement process to test your data collection process
The Collaborative provides a data collection tool to allow your team to monitor your progress.