You just need to get started

An organization can drive quality only through its people. Too often, we relegate quality to a single department or a small group of evangelical leaders but fail to make it everyone's business. Accountability has become a buzzword, and we have translated it into huge agreements with myriads of measures and indicators, all purporting to have something to do with quality.Institutions need to focus on a few things to improve quality. How do you build a culture? You plan, you pick certain goals to which you aspire, you set targets and you measure against those targets. You provide the skills, knowledge, expertise and infrastructure necessary to enable people to meet those targets, and then you drive for them. And you are transparent about it.I often think that we overcomplicate quality. As I have said repeatedly, it is as simple as choosing a measure, planning to implement some changes and re-measuring to see if your changes have had any impact. You don't need a national council, or even a provincial one, to make quality happen in the day-to-day operations of every healthcare organization in the country. Rather, you just need to get started.