Tools and methods for quality improvement and patient safety in perinatal care

The quality of health care is now recognized to vary widely in all medical specialties, including perinatal medicine. A national focus on quality improvement (QI) and patient safety is prompting providers to change and improve the care given to patients. All QI and safety efforts require the use of an improvement model to manage the complex process of improving care. This article reviews the most common frameworks in use today, including the Model for Improvement, Six Sigma, and Lean. Specific tools such as affinity, key driver and fishbone diagrams, process maps and statistical process control, as well as checklists are reviewed, with examples from the perinatal literature to illustrate their use in perinatal QI efforts.