Quality Improvement Initiative

Successful companies use quality improvement methods to create safer and better products. Today, many health organizations are using similar methods to improve the quality of care they provide.

The Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and its network of care centers have partnered for years to speed up the rate of improvement in CF care by:

• Working with experts in CF care and quality improvement 
• Updating CF care guidelines 
• Training care center staff in quality improvement 
• Setting national goals based on the care guidelines, medical research and information from the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation’s Patient Registry 
• Making key health data for each care center available to the public

The Foundation has created a Quality Improvement Toolkit. Like the care center health data, this toolkit aims to help people with CF, their families and care centers become successful partners in improving the quality of CF care. These efforts also reflect the Foundation’s seven goals for improving CF care:

• To make people with CF and their families full members of the care team;
• To help people with CF attain normal growth and nutrition status;
• To ensure that people with CF receive respiratory therapies that keep lung function steady and to diagnose respiratory infections early;
• To decrease the spread of germs between people with CF;
• To prevent complications and/or to diagnose and treat them early;
• To provide care regardless of race, age, education or insurance coverage; and
• To support all transplantation and end-of-life care decisions.

To inspire action and strengthen partnerships, the Foundation provides key health data for each of its accredited care centers. The data includes four measures:

• Lung function (measured by FEV₁% predicted); 
• Nutritional status (measured by body mass index or BMI); 
• Percent of people with CF screened for CF-related diabetes (CFRD) per calendar year; and 
• Percent of people with CF who have at least four clinical visits, one sputum or throat culture and two lung function tests (PFTs) per calendar year.

The data is a tool for people with CF and their families to use to partner with their care center to improve CF care. However, this data only tells part of the story. It is important for you and your care center to become partners and take action to improve your or your child's care and thus improve your care center.

The Foundation encourages you to discuss the data with your care center. When people with CF and their families become active participants in care, and in partnership with their care center staff—quality always improves.

To learn more about quality improvement in CF care, watch the Web cast, "One Team's Story: Raising the Bar of CF Care" (orig. air date April 5, 2005), and "Quality CF Care is More Than the Numbers" (orig. air date November 28, 2006), plus you can read "It's All About Suzy: Quality Improvement in CF Care."