Performance of key processes of care, health outcomes, and patient satisfaction are regularly measured and tracked by physicians themselves, and this information is used to continually improve clinical practice and reduce wasteful services. Finally, contributions of all members of the office staff are sought and respected. It is the cumulative knowledge of staff members that provides the most comprehensive understanding of how the office works. As physicians, we need to learn from what we do in order to better the healthcare system. This will entail use of measurements in our practice that routinely track key processes and outcomes of care.
Providers can then use the information to devise tests of change.
The key tenet of improvement is that every system is perfectly designed to achieve the results it gets. To improve care, we must improve the systems that provide it. The failures noted earlier are not, for the most part, related to individual failures of physicians or others but to the systems in which these professionals work. Finally, care can be made better by applying the science of improvement. The goal for your practice should be to improve the appropriateness of care in order to provide better outcomes for patients, including health status, service quality, and cost.