Journal of Vascular and Interventional Radiology
Volume 20, Issue 2 , Pages 157-163, February 2009

Improving Quality and Patient Safety by Minimizing Unnecessary Variation

Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology, Washington University School of Medicine, 510 South Kingshighway Boulevard, St. Louis, MO 63110

Received 8 August 2008; received in revised form 27 October 2008; accepted 28 October 2008. published online 22 December 2008.

Quality and safety in health care have proven difficult to precisely define and measure. In other fields, quality is defined as the absence of unnecessary variation and process improvement efforts are gauged by their ability to reduce variation. This article explores how this definition can be applied to various attributes of image-guided procedures.

 

 This work was supported in part by the Society of Interventional Radiology (SIR) Foundation, Barnes Jewish Hospital Foundation (St. Louis, Missouri), and Siemens Medical Systems (Erlangen, Germany). Neither of the authors has identified a conflict of interest.

PII: S1051-0443(08)00998-6

doi:10.1016/j.jvir.2008.10.031

Journal of Vascular and Interventional Radiology
Volume 20, Issue 2 , Pages 157-163, February 2009

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