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Updated: Nov 16, 2025

Using Visual and Narrative Methods to Achieve Fair Process in Clinical Care
Published on: February 16, 2011
Statistics in quality improvement: Measurement and statistical process control
Heather A Wolfe1, April Taylor2, Rajeev Subramanyam1
1Division of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine, The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, The University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
Abstract:
Data are used in healthcare quality improvement endeavors to measure and determine whether the changes made in the course of the work have made the desired impact. The methods used to analyze data in quality improvement differ slightly from those used in classical statistics. Run charts and statistical process control charts are the most common types of graphical representations used to visualize data collected for quality improvement. This review provides a basic introduction to measurement in quality improvement and explains the use of run charts and statistical process control charts with real-life examples.
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