Mammography is a technically difficult examination, and experienced professionals with excellent dedicated mammographic equipment and processing conditions are essential to the delivery of quality examinations. However, the determinants of quality in mammography encompass more than just the technical components. The whole process, beginning with the scheduling of the examination and ...

Thirty-five millimeter slides can enhance the quality of presentations. They can present complex ideas and transmit information more clearly. They can engage the learner and add a touch of professionalism. However, the cost of professionally generated slides may be prohibitive for individuals working for smaller institutions with limited budgets. This ...

We submitted nine predictions to CASP2 using our fold recognition program ProFIT. Two of these structures were still unsolved by the end of the experiment, six had a recognizable fold, and one fold was new. Four predictions of the six recognizable folds were correct. Two models were excellent in terms ...

A hospital performance improvement project to improve the quality of x-ray interpretations in the emergency department is described. To amplify the benefits of this project, a multimedia computer program containing this information was created and distributed via the mail and over the internet. Users are encouraged to copy the program ...

This article identifies the components that contribute to a healthcare organization's costs in controlling quality. A central tenet of our argument is that at its core, quality is the result of a series of transactions among members of a diverse network. Transaction cost economics is applied internally to analyze intraorganizational ...

A number of operative procedures in gynecology are now being performed with the help of endoscopy, a development that was not based upon appropriate clinical trials. Quality assurance is today's challenge in gynecological endoscopic surgery. Although as a rule data from quality registers cannot be used for comparative purposes, they ...

The California Dental Association has developed a program--Quality Improvement through Lifelong Learning or QUIL3--that enables a dentist to privately and confidentially determine whether he or she meets current clinical practice standards and has the requisite knowledge to practice dentistry competently. Using the concept of continuous quality improvement (CQI), this innovative ...

Total Quality Management (TQM) provides a philosophy and a method for organizational renewal and redesign. It is based on the principle that productive work is accomplished through processes. Improving these processes requires the office team to objectively measure performance, discover root causes of problems, take corrective action, determine the effect ...

Leadership and the employee involvement approach are features of continuous improvement (CI). The experiences of Granite Rock with the strategy and practices for quality improvements are presented. The major factors to be focused on to move quality from the dismal levels that exist today toward world-class quality status are examined.

The concept of continuous improvement can be viewed from the perspectives of the elimination of waste or the improvement of quality. The waste elimination approach attacks all forms of waste, whereas quality improvement uses the concept of total customer satisfaction. This article describes an eight-step model for continuous improvement that ...

There has been a long history of public and professional concern about the safety and quality of mammography. Whereas concerns about radiation dose levels dominated the 1970s, the type of equipment used in mammography was the focus of the 1980s. In the early 1990s, there was a lack of confidence ...

Total quality management (TQM) of laboratory services is connected with a comprehensive system of quality assurance, which integrates quality development, quality maintenance, and quality improvement. TQM concentrates not only on analytic performance and organizational issues, including specimen collection, reporting, and interpretation of results, but focuses also on the benefits to ...

Within the scope of this paper, the Working Group has attempted to place external quality assessment (EQA) within the whole context of quality management in laboratory medicine. First, the objectives of EQA schemes are defined and current EQA schemes evaluated. In most schemes, the objectives are not defined a priori ...

Continuous quality improvement activities are mandated by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations and the College of American Pathologists. In a recent Needs Assessment Survey of neuropathologists undertaken by the College of American Pathologists, in cooperation with the American Association of Neuropathologists, neuropathologists indicated the need for information ...

Modern Dead Sea cosmetics have developed in order to meet the demands of new regulations, technical opportunities, and today's consumer expectations for higher quality standards and proven performance. As an example of the application of this approach, the authors describe the development of a new cosmetic formulation, based on "Osmoter", ...

Quality improvement professionals provide training in basic continuous quality improvement (CQI) concepts. In planning a training program, it is worthwhile to consider how material can be presented so that it will be remembered. Activities that allow adult learners to participate will increase their understanding and retention. Simple, effective illustrations can ...

As community-based health care services continue to grow, quality management programs for new, nontraditional settings are being developed. The article describes a quality management program implemented in a nursing center in an urban, multicultural high school. The three components of the program--formulation of the quality management plan, the development of ...

The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) is committed to continual refinement of its system of quality measurement. The VHA organizational structure for quality measurement has three levels. At the national level, the Associate Chief Medical Director for Quality Management provides leadership, sets policy, furnishes measurement tools, develops and distributes measures of ...

Dimensions of quality of life were compared for people living in small ICFs/MR versus other community living arrangements. Individual differences were controlled by using a matched comparison design. The data set contained 35 indicators of quality. Primary analyses were restricted to data from 1988 to 1992. Fifty-one people from small ...

Service systems for individuals with developmental disabilities are striving to assist people to obtain a higher quality of life, consistent with principles associated with continuous quality improvement. Through innovative, systematic, and widespread application of such principles, Oregon's Office of Developmental Disability Services is helping residential programs improve lifestyle outcomes for ...

Quality assurance is the sum of all parameters concerning the preparation and control of a finished product. It is a wide term commonly used for the confirmation and validity of various ways and measurements adopted to obtain a high quality procedure for intended use with guaranteed performance. Biological quality control ...

Practice guidelines or standards of quality are expected to be credible, valid, flexible, clear, and address the target population appropriately. Most, however, do not meet these criteria. Guidelines and standards of quality need to be written with indicators to measure compliance. If inadequate, compliance can be improved by devising implementation ...

BACKGROUND: Double loop learning, an attempt to question underlying organizational policies and goals, offers the possibility of making quality improvement (QI) efforts more productive. Joint Commission standards in the Improving Organizational Performance (PI) chapter of the Comprehensive Accreditation Manual for Hospitals regarding the measurement of important processes or outcomes related ...

This study attempts to quantify the effect of magnifiers on the quality of typical procedures in fixed prosthodontics that are technique-sensitive and have significant increase in clinical success when errors are minimized. Dental students who performed fixed prosthodontic procedures while using magnifiers were found to have committed half as many ...

Clinical guidelines are problematic because it is difficult to get people to follow them, effective mechanisms are usually not in place to determine guideline compliance, and the belief that guideline compliance is associated with higher clinical quality or lower cost is usually based on faith rather than data. These issues ...

This article describes in detail the steps taken in the Operating Room at the Toronto Hospital in implementing a Continuous Quality Management framework. Focusing on active participation, all levels of the O.R. staff worked through a process of identifying, developing, measuring and evaluating standards of practice. A step by step ...

The incorporation of quality improvement methods into the practice of laboratory medicine has become widespread in recent years. However, a significant number of laboratory professionals feel that quality improvement efforts take an excessive amount of time to achieve results. Using quality improvement methods and tools will have limited success without ...

BACKGROUND: In 1989, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation launched a demonstration project to test a consortium approach to quality improvement. As part of this project, four hospital consortia in various parts of the United States are currently sharing quality resources (for example, training) and collaborating on various improvement efforts. The ...

This article describes the essential elements of an effective quality control program in mammography. Quality Control tests recently updated in the 1994 ACR Mammography Quality Control Manual, such as the darkroom fog and limiting spatial resolution tests, are described in detail. The article goes on to describe some common problems ...

Health care leaders now recognize the importance of adding continuous quality improvement activities and the measurement of clinical outcomes to their longstanding quality programs. From other industry leaders, they have learned that there is great promise on quality/cost returns when quality programs focus on measuring performance outcomes rather than just ...

Data quality is the cornerstone on which other quality activities are built. The importance of accurately coded data cannot be overlooked. The Rural Cooperative Coding Project sought to collaborate with rural hospitals in Utah to improve the quality of that data through an individualized educational program allowing open and active ...

Many people have an interest in the quality of medical education. Students have the right to as good an education as possible, and the public has the right to well-educated and well-trained general physicians and specialists. Therefore, a medical school or faculty must ensure its quality and is accountable for ...

Healthcare organizations across the United States are embracing the tenets of continuous quality improvement. The challenge is to disseminate information about this quality activity throughout the organization. A monthly newsletter serves two vital purposes: to share the improvements and to generate more enthusiasm and participation by staff members. This article ...

The multidisciplinary approach to the treatment of patients with chronic renal failure has existed since the inception of the Medicare end-stage renal disease (ESRD) Program. Social workers as team members in the various renal outpatient treatment settings have contributed to the planning and assessment of patient needs with the goal ...

Fertility data from 8 artificial insemination programs, involving more than 5000 ewes and 110 rams in 3 flocks, were analyzed to determine variation due to individual AI program and ram in the reproductive performance of ewes inseminated with frozen-thawed semen by laparoscopy. The semen had been previously frozen by commercial ...

This study examined the effects of a self-management procedure designed to teach three 13- to 14-year-old middle school boys with learning and behavior problems to improve the completeness (inclusion of identified story elements) and quality (organization and coherence) of their story compositions. The procedure was based on two strategies: teaching ...

Expertise in quality and process improvement is becoming widely recognized as a valuable resource. The more objective viewpoint and experience of consulting firms or outside professionals in quality and change management often is critical to the success of organization-wide quality or change implementation. Outside consultants, however, are not inexpensive. It ...

A patient classification system is essential for hospice programs to stay competitive within a changing health care system. The development and implementation of an appropriate system that objectively evaluates cost, quality, and effectiveness of services is one mechanism to support the need for home-based hospice programs. The OCS provides a ...

1. HISTORY. The program began in 1986 as the Resource Management Initiative and had just six pilot sites. In 1989, Ministers decided to establish a national Resource Management Programme covering all general acute Hospitals in England with more than 250 beds--some 250-260 sites in all. A range of community units ...

The design of institutional medication use programs that are effective and meet regulatory and accreditation standards is becoming increasingly dependent upon a thorough understanding of the principles and applications of continuous quality improvement (CQI) and total quality management (TQM). Both the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations and the ...

Benchmarking is based on the common sense idea that someone else, either inside or outside of libraries, has found a better way of doing certain things and that your own library's performance can be improved by finding out how others do things and adopting the best practices you find. Benchmarking ...

A gerontological training program for nursing assistants has been developed by the New England Gerontology Academy to (1) improve the quality of care delivered to the institutionalized elderly, and (2) provide training and assistance on a gerontology career ladder to displaced homemakers, AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent Children) recipients, ...

What techniques or steps are necessary to overcome obstacles and achieve the incorporation of continuous quality improvement (CQI) methods in existing quality management programs? Education of staff, identification of customers' expectations, and implementation of a plan to administer activities are critical to a positive outcome of CQI efforts. Our article ...

Much like that elusive but sought-after commodity, beauty, quality lies to a great extent in the eye and mind of its beholder. Whilst some are content with second-hand goods, others insist that only the best will do, the judgement of what is the best being a very individual phenomenon. The ...

Healthcare organizations are looking to quality programs as a key to survival, but many financial managers are unaware of the measurement methods they can use to quantify the results of quality management efforts. These methods can tell what impact quality initiatives have had on corporate culture, systems operations, and the ...

The continuous rapid growth in vehicle miles travelled coupled with the rapid increase in traffic congestion on highways of virtually every large urban area, explain a major portion of the observed deterioration of urban air quality. To halt this deterioration and to secure safe and healthy environments and improve the ...

The regulatory and legal communities have begun only recently to address the medicolegal issues surrounding indoor air quality. No single governmental agency is responsible for indoor air quality issues. The focus of the federal government's indoor air quality programs is on the gathering and dissemination of information rather than on ...

The bedside chest radiography process was analyzed in terms of modern quality management guidelines and the sources of quality problems were identified. In order to analyze systematically the various quality factors, the process was described in a top-down fashion with the aid of data flow diagrams. Two internal quality control ...

Participation in a self-administered quality assessment (SAQA) program led to changes in New Jersey dentists' perceptions of practice quality. Ninety-four percent indicated they discovered practice deficiencies. This study suggests that using a self-administered quality assessment program, such as the SAQA program, can lead to a better understanding of a practice's ...

Quality improvement tools that integrate clinical and financial data provide a statistical basis for quality planning and cost containment. Clinical path development results in an operational guideline for optimizing quality and efficiency. Implementation provides the means for delivering value. This article describes a step-by-step process in which quality improvement tools ...