Foundations of Healthcare Quality Program

At the end of this program, you will have the requisite foundational knowledge to start a career or role in health quality and improvement or be able to start leading targeted quality improvement in your team department. You will have a solid understanding of the role of organizations and leaders in fostering a quality culture and strategy and be able to use common quality tools including measurement.

Unit 1 – Introduction to Healthcare Quality  

• Foundational terms and concepts
• What is healthcare quality and why is it important?
• Triple and quadruple aim
• Brief history of QI
• Dimensions of quality
• Levels of quality
• Partnering with patients and families

Unit 2 – Organizational Quality 

• Creating organizational conditions for quality
• Establishing a culture of quality and safety
• Priorities for quality in healthcare organizations
• Quality strategy & integration with organizational strategy
• Elements of a quality plan
• Planning & setting direction
• Understand your Provincial/Jurisdictional context and assess your organization’s quality strategy

Unit 3 – The Quality Improvement Process

• Common quality improvement methodologies
• Common principles of effective QI
• How to use a comprehensive and systematic QI process
• Common QI tools (e.g.: root cause analysis/fishbone, AIM statements, PDSA cycles, prioritization matrix) that support analysis and learning about QI issues and possible solutions
• Practice identifying problems, aims and root causes

Unit 4 – Measuring and Monitoring Quality

• Why measurement is critical for quality
• Types of quality measures
• Developing effective measures
• Data sources & collection
• Reporting and monitoring tools
• System-level quality measures
• Practice testing and measuring a change