Book 8: Performance Measures and Trending for Safety, Quality, and Business Management

TapRooT® Users know that the TapRooT® Root Cause Analysis provides a systematic process to investigate accidents, incidents, quality issues, patient safety events, equipment reliability issues, and operations difficulties. But they may not know how to use the data the system produces to measure performance and spot trends.

This book explains how performance measures and trends can be used and misused. It provides examples of how trending is frequently misused and how you can spot the misuse of trends, so you won't be fooled. It provides simple techniques that can be applied for quick improvement efforts. It explains and demonstrates more advanced techniques that can also be easily understood and applied to spot trends in more complex data. And it explains how to use the same techniques to spot trends in often misunderstood infrequently occurring data (for example, accident data).

Don't be misled. Don't react to common variation that isn't a trend. Use real trending skills to prove that improvement has occurred. Predict improvement and future accidents all by applying the techniques explained in this book.