Project Application
The learnings in this module are most relevant to the “Obtain Data and Select Measures” section of the Project Workbook. In addition, the “Understand Your Project Landscape” phase of work includes identifying potential sources of data for your overuse project and points out that dedicating some resources to measurement will probably be necessary, so identifying those resources is important.
If no reliable source of data is available, you might also need to re-think the selection of a topic to address for your project. It is also important to think about what data and measures will be meaningful to stakeholders, so asking them about this would be important as part of the stakeholder assessment you do during that phase of work.
Finally, it is important to remember that data need to be “good enough” and not perfect. Don’t fall into the trap of waiting for data and measures from your health IT department for many, many months only to find that what is produced is not usable. For quality improvement, frequent random “chart biopsies” are often more valuable, and provide more insights into the overuse phenomenon, than any report from a health IT database.