This innovative volume presents a cogent case for quality improvement (QI) in behavioral healthcare as ethical practice, solid science, and good business. Divided between foundational concepts, key QI tools and methods, and emerging applications, it offers guidelines for raising care standards while addressing ongoing issues of treatment validity, staffing and training, costs and funding, and integration with medical systems. Expert contributors review the implications and potential of QI in diverse areas such as treatment of entrenched mental disorders, in correctional facilities, and within the professional context of the American Psychological Association. The insights, examples, and strategies featured will increase in value as behavioral health becomes more prominent in integrated care and vital to large-scale health goals. Included in the coverage: Behavioral health conditions: direct treatment costs and indirect social costs. /liliQuality improvement and clinical psychological science. · Process mapping to improve quality in behavioral health service delivery. · Checklists for quality improvement and evaluation in behavioral health. · Creating a quality improvement system for an integrated care program: the why, what, and how to measure. · Feedback Informed Treatment (FIT): improving the outcome of psychotherapy one person at a time. Quality Improvement i n Behavioral Healthcare gives health psychologists, public health professionals, and health administrators a real-world framework for maintaining quality services in a rapidly evolving health landscape.

This book provides readers with an invaluable set of tools to convert the endless challenges for quality and myriad opportunities for improvement into meaningful and useful change. It considers how to manage primary care organisations in order to improve quality of care; how general practices are regulated and held accountable; various techniques used for assessing and measuring; and commonly used quality improvement frameworks.

In recent decades most of the international effort given over to studying and improving the safety of patient care has been focused in acute hospital settings. To some extent this was always something of a puzzle to those of us with a direct interest in this important issue...Now, however, the tide is slowly turning. Policymakers, healthcare leader

This text will act as a quick quality improvement reference and resource for every role within the healthcare system including physicians, nurses, support staff, security, fellows, residents, therapists, managers, directors, chiefs, and board members. It aims to provide a broad overview of quality improvement concepts and how they can be immediately pertinent to one's role. The editors have used a tiered approach, outlining what each role needs to lead a QI project, participate as a team member, set goals and identify resources to drive improvements in care delivery. Each section of the book targets a specific group within the healthcare organization. Pocket Guide to Quality Improvement in Healthcare will guide the individual, as well as the organization to fully engage all staff in QI, creating a safety culture, and ultimately strengthening care delivery.

This volume, developed by the Observatory together with OECD, provides an overall conceptual framework for understanding and applying strategies aimed at improving quality of care. Crucially, it summarizes available evidence on different quality strategies and provides recommendations for their implementation. This book is intended to help policy-makers to understand concepts of quality and to support them to evaluate single strategies and combinations of strategies.

According to Transforming Health Care Scheduling and Access, long waits for treatment are a function of the disjointed manner in which most health systems have evolved to accommodate the needs and the desires of doctors and administrators, rather than those of patients. The result is a health care system that deploys its most valuable resource-highly trained personnel-inefficiently, leading to an unnecessary imbalance between the demand for appointments and the supply of open appointments. This study makes the case that by using the techniques of systems engineering, new approaches to management, and increased patient and family involvement, the current health care system can move forward to one with greater focus on the preferences of patients to provide convenient, efficient, and excellent health care without the need for costly investment. Transforming Health Care Scheduling and Access identifies best practices for making significant improvements in access and system-level change. This report makes recommendations for principles and practices to improve access by promoting efficient scheduling. This study will be a valuable resource for practitioners to progress toward a more patient-focused "How can we help you today?" culture.

Quality improvement (QI) is embedded in the fabric of successful healthcare organisations across the world, with healthcare professionals increasingly expected to develop and lead improvement as a core part of their clinical responsibilities. As a result, QI is rapidly becoming a feature of the education and training programmes of all healthcare professionals. Written and edited by some of the leading clinicians and managers in the field, ABC of Quality Improvement is designed for clinicians new to the discipline, as well as experienced leaders of change and improvement. Providing comprehensive coverage and clear, succinct descriptions of the major tools, techniques and approaches, this new addition to the ABC series demystifies quality improvement and develops a broader understanding of what constitutes quality in healthcare. With practical examples of improvement interventions and the common pitfalls that can befall them, this book will support and enable readers to manage change projects within their own organisations. Relevant to doctors, dentists, nurses, health service managers and support staff, medical students and doctors in training, their tutors and trainers, and other healthcare professionals at various levels, ABC of Quality Improvement will give readers the confidence to embark on their own improvement projects, whoever, and wherever they may be.