Controlling Variation in Health Care: A Consultation from Walter Shewhart
Item
Title
Controlling Variation in Health Care: A Consultation from Walter Shewhart
Abstract/Description
The control of unintended variation is an objective central to modern industrial quality management methods, based largely on the theoretical work of Walter A. Shewhart. As industrial quality management techniques find their place in health care, professionals may feel threatened by the effort to reduce variation. Understanding may reduce this fear. Variation of the types addressed in quality control efforts erodes quality and reliability, and adds unnecessarily to costs. Such undesirable variation derives, for example, from misinterpretation of random noise in clinical data, from unreliability in the performance of clinical and support systems intended to support care, from habitual differences in practice style that are not grounded in knowledge or reason, and from the failure to integrate care across the boundaries of components of the health care system. Quality management efforts can successfully reduce each of these forms of variation without insult to the professional autonomy, dignity, or purpose of health care professionals. Professionals need to embrace the scientific control of variation in the service of their patients and themselves.
Author/creator
Date
In publication
Volume
29
Issue
12
Pages
1212-1225
Resource type
Background/Context
Medium
Print
Background/context type
Conceptual
IRE Approach/Concept
Open access/free-text available
Yes
ISSN
0025-7079
URL
Citation
Berwick, D. M. (1991). Controlling Variation in Health Care: A Consultation from Walter Shewhart. Medical Care, 29(12), 1212–1225.
Resource status/form
Published Text
Scholarship genre
Theoretical
Comments
No comment yet! Be the first to add one!