PT - JOURNAL ARTICLE AU - Sean M O'Neill AU - Susanne Hempel AU - Yee-Wei Lim AU - Marjorie S Danz AU - Robbie Foy AU - Marika J Suttorp AU - Paul G Shekelle AU - Lisa V Rubenstein TI - Identifying continuous quality improvement publications: what makes an improvement intervention ‘CQI’? AID - 10.1136/bmjqs.2010.050880 DP - 2011 Dec 01 TA - BMJ Quality & Safety PG - 1011--1019 VI - 20 IP - 12 4099 - http://qualitysafety.bmj.com/content/20/12/1011.short 4100 - http://qualitysafety.bmj.com/content/20/12/1011.full SO - BMJ Qual Saf2011 Dec 01; 20 AB - Background The term continuous quality improvement (CQI) is often used to refer to a method for improving care, but no consensus statement exists on the definition of CQI. Evidence reviews are critical for advancing science, and depend on reliable definitions for article selection.Methods As a preliminary step towards improving CQI evidence reviews, this study aimed to use expert panel methods to identify key CQI definitional features and develop and test a screening instrument for reliably identifying articles with the key features. We used a previously published method to identify 106 articles meeting the general definition of a quality improvement intervention (QII) from 9427 electronically identified articles from PubMed. Two raters then applied a six-item CQI screen to the 106 articles.Results Per cent agreement ranged from 55.7% to 75.5% for the six items, and reviewer-adjusted intra-class correlation ranged from 0.43 to 0.62. ‘Feedback of systematically collected data’ was the most common feature (64%), followed by being at least ‘somewhat’ adapted to local conditions (61%), feedback at meetings involving participant leaders (46%), using an iterative development process (40%), being at least ‘somewhat’ data driven (34%), and using a recognised change method (28%). All six features were present in 14.2% of QII articles.Conclusions We conclude that CQI features can be extracted from QII articles with reasonable reliability, but only a small proportion of QII articles include all features. Further consensus development is needed to support meaningful use of the term CQI for scientific communication.