Healthcare Quality Catalyst (HQC) has developed a standardized methodology for continuous improvement, known as the Adaptive Improvement Framework. This framework can help healthcare organizations improve their clinical quality and cost outcomes. It can be adapted to the needs of an individual organization, but still provide a predictable, repeatable, and scalable process for improvement.

Adaptive Improvement Framework

The Adaptive Improvement Framework model identifies three core groups of work built on a foundation of technology that supports care delivery. The three groups of work are:

1. Outcomes Measurement—Turning data into useful information.
2. Implementation Support—Making it easy to do the right thing.
3. Organizational Alignment—Organizing teams to define and implement best practices.

HQC can help healthcare organizations with the challenge of moving toward the ideal of developing care management systems, deploying them enterprise-wide, and using them to produce and sustain improvements. HQC has developed the services, software, and methodologies to accelerate the progress of their clients toward this ideal. We help simplify the overwhelming tasks to improve outcomes and shift the culture of organizations to be more data-driven.

Nine Steps to Execute Against the Adaptive Improvement Framework

Starting from the base of the pyramid and moving up, this process outlines the sequence of steps to implement the Adaptive Improvement Framework:

1. Implement an electronic medical record data-capture process.
2. Establish an enterprise data warehouse.
3. Prioritize efforts after a thorough key process analysis.
4. Create a culture of data-driven learning, and implement enterprise-wide quality improvement training.
5. Initiate collaboration discussions with payers.
6. Define "best practice" care algorithms for care delivery ("shared baselines").
7. Establish advanced analytics (i.e., subject area data marts).
8. Develop knowledge assets more efficiently.
9. Achieve leadership in outcomes improvement.

The Adaptive Data Warehouse

Development of an adaptive data warehouse is part of the Adaptive Improvement Framework, consisting of step #2, Implementing a basic enterprise data warehouse, and step #7, Establishing advanced analytics. The following steps are specific to the adaptive data warehouse:

1. Architect an enterprise data warehouse structure.
2. Identify the existing data sources.
3. Create a metadata tagging and search process.
4. Establish security and auditing processes.
5. Identify the common identifiers and build a map to link them together.
6. Bring data sources into the data warehouse.
7. Create subsequent subject area data marts based on the combination of different source marts.
8. Analyze and iterate.