A survey of hospital quality improvement activities

Five years after the Institute of Medicine (IOM) called for a redesigned U.S. health care system, relatively little was known about the extent to which hospitals had undertaken quality improvement (QI) efforts to address deficiencies in patient care. To examine the state of hospital QI activities in 2006, the authors designed and conducted a survey of short-term, general hospitals with 25 or more beds. In a sample of 470 hospitals, they found that many were actively engaged in improvement efforts but that these activities varied in method and impact. Hospitals with high levels of perceived quality, as reflected in assessments by their quality managers, were more likely to have embraced QI as a strategic priority, employed quality practices and processes consistent with IOM aims, fostered staff training and involvement in QI methods, engaged in an array of QI activities and clinical QI strategies, and maintained staffing levels favoring fewer patients per nurse.