Quality Planning

Defining What Matters Most

Quality Planning establishes the strategic direction for the Department’s quality efforts. This process identifies the clinical, operational, safety, and system-level priorities that matter most to our patients, workforce, institutional partners, and regulatory stakeholders. These priorities are informed by data, frontline experience, patient needs, emerging risks, and opportunities for innovation.

Quality Planning ensures that departmental improvement efforts are proactive rather than reactive, aligning resources and initiatives around clearly defined goals with measurable impact. By establishing shared priorities, Quality Planning creates the foundation that connects all other domains of Whole System Quality. Together, this ensures that quality efforts remain aligned, visible, and strategically focused across every division and care environment.

How Priorities Are Selected

Departmental quality priorities are identified through a structured review of:

  • Clinical performance and outcome trends
  • Patient safety events and recurring system risks
  • Regulatory and institutional requirements
  • Operational challenges and workflow inefficiencies
  • Feedback from faculty, staff, trainees, and interdisciplinary partners
  • Emerging opportunities for innovation, technology, and AI-enabled improvement

Priorities are reviewed and refined through leadership collaboration and ongoing stakeholder engagement to ensure alignment with departmental strategy and institutional goals.

Current Departmental Quality Focus Areas

These focus areas represent strategic opportunities to improve patient outcomes, operational reliability, and system performance across the department:

  • Reducing medication errors
    • Improving medication safety through system redesign, standardization, and monitoring
  • Perioperative glycemic control
    • Improving consistency in glucose management to reduce complications and improve outcomes
  • Environmental sustainability
    • Reducing environmental impact through data-driven anesthetic stewardship and resource optimization
  • Perioperative length of stay reduction
    • Improving throughput and care coordination to enhance efficiency and patient flow
  • Reducing postoperative respiratory complications
    • Strengthening prevention, monitoring, and escalation pathways for respiratory safety
  • Reducing postoperative acute kidney injury
    • Improving early identification, risk mitigation, and evidence-based prevention practices
  • Blood product readiness, stewardship, and safe administration
    • Enhancing reliability, timeliness, and safety across transfusion-related workflows
  • Quantitative neuromuscular blockade monitoring
    • Improving adherence to evidence-based monitoring practices to reduce residual blockade risk
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