RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Identifying continuous quality improvement publications: what makes an improvement intervention ‘CQI’?
JF BMJ Quality & Safety
JO BMJ Qual Saf
FD BMJ Publishing Group Ltd
SP 1011
OP 1019
DO 10.1136/bmjqs.2010.050880
VO 20
IS 12
A1 Sean M O'Neill
A1 Susanne Hempel
A1 Yee-Wei Lim
A1 Marjorie S Danz
A1 Robbie Foy
A1 Marika J Suttorp
A1 Paul G Shekelle
A1 Lisa V Rubenstein
YR 2011
UL http://qualitysafety.bmj.com/content/20/12/1011.abstract
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.