1) Balanced scorecards are useful because they

2) When a case manager wants to demonstrate length of stay data that depicts both common cause and special cause variation, which of the following should be used?

3) Performance improvement teams should always be required to

4) Which of the following obstetrical outcomes will result in a morbidity review?

5) When errors are discovered, staff and supervisors best demonstrate a culture of safety by

6) A serious event has occurred related to the timely notification of critical test results. The root cause was traced to nursing difficulty with following the organizational policy. To prevent a similar event from reoccurring, which of the following should be done next?

7) Empowerment gives employees the opportunity to

8) On discharge, the patient refuses billing because 2 out of 3 days of his stay in the hospital is due to medication anaphylaxis. This occurrence is:

9) A facility decided to implement Standard Precautions 1 year ago, but compliance has been poor. In addition to assessing the causes for poor compliance, the most effective way for the organization to improve compliance is to

10) An organization hires a quality professional to pass quality improvement concepts to the staff. The first thing the quality professional should do

11) When developing department-specific performance measures and indicators, the quality manager as a consultant should

12) Which of the following is the best way to determine if a quality improvement initiative is successful?

13) The staff has been trained and oriented on a new electronic incident reporting system. In the past, staff could report anonymously. The new system requires staff to sign in with an individualized username and password. Three months after implementation, there is a sharp reduction in the number of reported incidents. Which of the following reasons for underreporting of incidents is of greatest concern?

14) Medication reconciliation is a process intended to

15) Which of the following is the best tool to begin an investigation into the causes of laboratory labeling errors?

16) The utilization management committee is reviewing length-of-stay data for a particular procedure. In comparing data by physician, which of the following statistics will be most useful?

17) A policy for "time-outs" in an operating room was initiated in the first quarter. The second quarter data demonstrated only 40% compliance with all elements of the process. The first step the Quality Council should take is to:

18) The major drawback of using raw numbers to present the results of quality monitoring is that they

19) Which of the following adverse events is NOT considered a sentinel event?

20) In developing a performance improvement action plan, which of the following tools should be used FIRST?

21) Quality improvement teams are beneficial because they

22) Which of the following actions should a facilitator make the highest priority during the customer focus group process?

23) An ambulatory/outpatient care facility identifies an opportunity to improve the turnaround time for reports of X-rays performed at a local hospital. Which of the following groups should be involved in the team to improve the process?

24) One difference between continuous quality improvement and traditional quality assurance is that quality improvement always

25) A Quality Council has chartered a Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) team to examine the best method of preventing medication errors after the installation of a new medication dispensing system. The team's first major task should be to