Author Description

This book is intended to serve as a guide to developing and using performance measures in the assessment and improvement of emergency care. Unlike most performance measures with which emergency care professionals are by now familiar, those described and discussed herein are designed to support a transition from assessment activities that ask "What processes are in place?" to those that ask "Are processes having the desired effect?" Experience has taught us that of the variety of measures employed to date, few provide useful and meaningful answers to the latter question. Thus, as used throughout this text, we consciously reserve the term "indicator" to connote a performance measure that yields data useful to effecting meaningful improvement in care. This volume offers a step-by-step description of the indicator development methodology that continues to evolve as a principal focal point of the Joint Commission's Agenda for Change initiatives. It provides both theoretical and practice-based explanations of indicator applications and, as such, offers a new foundation for constructing the vital statistical cornerstones of contemporary quality assessment and improvement activities. [From the Preface]