Quality improvement interventions: what works?

Quality improvement efforts in healthcare focus on the use of interventions and tools to change identified processes. What interventions and tools are effective? A survey of the literature yields information on interventions and tools that have been used to successfully create quality improvement. Effective methods for changing clinical practice include face-to-face education outreach visits, involvement of local opinion leaders, reminder systems, repeated feedback from the senior medical staff, patient-mediated interventions, and a combination of interventions deployed simultaneously. Participation in an organized continuous quality improvement process is beneficial in conjunction with additional interventions.