The Use of Performance Improvement Methodologies in Healthcare Quality Initiatives: (Review Artical)

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

KSA, National Guard Health Affairs

Abstract

Background: Benchmarking is widely acknowledged as a good approach for identifying strengths and shortcomings across all levels of the healthcare system. Although there is an increasing interest in the practice and research of benchmark-ing, its impact on the quality of treatment has not been well explained. Consequently, we performed a methodical analysis of existing literature to combine the data on the correlation be-tween benchmarking and enhancing quality. Aim of Study: This study aims to gather information on the measures that might be used to enhance quality improvement. Methods: We conducted a comprehensive search across three databases (PubMed, Web of Science, and Scopus) toidentify papers that examined the influence of benchmarking on the quality of care, including both the procedures and re-sults. After evaluating the articles for inclusion, we performed data analysis, quality assessment, and critical synthesis in ac-cordance with the PRISMA criteria for conducting a systematic literature review. Results: There were a total of 17 items that were found. All studies found a favorable correlation between the use of bench-marking and the enhancement of quality in terms of processes (N = 10), outcomes (N = 13), or both (N = 7). Out of the 12 stud-ies analyzed, most of them included an additional intervention, in addition to benchmarking, to encourage the enhancement of quality. The treatments varied from participant meetings to quality improvement plans and cash incentives. More than half of the trials (N = 10) used a mix of various therapies. Conclusion: The findings derived from this analysis in-dicate that benchmarking in healthcare is an expanding area, and more investigation is necessary to have a deeper compre-hension of its impact on enhancing quality. Moreover, our re-search suggests that benchmarking may promote enhancements in quality, and that additional treatments, in conjunction with benchmarking, seem to strengthen this improvement. While this study suggests that integrating performance assessment with treatments might improve quality, future research should focus on analyzing the individual effect of these interventions.