A Health Care Leader Action Guide: Understanding and Managing Variation

The purpose of this guide is to provide hospitals with a resource to help reduce inappropriate variation within their own organizations and in conjunction with care partners. The guide includes practical steps to understanding and managing variation and a list of best practices and case studies as examples and resources for hospital leaders to use for implementing key interventions.

Variation arises from many interrelated factors, some within and some beyond the control of the health care system. Not all variation is undesirable or inappropriate. Distinguishing among the types of variation to determine what is acceptable and what is not is critical to arriving at a reasonable set of recommendations for action. Hospitals and health systems can take these action steps alone or in collaboration with others to reduce inappropriate variation within their organizations.

There are six steps to understanding and managing variation:

• Determine your strategic focus to reducing variation
• Set measurable goals
• Acquire and analyze data
• Understand your data
• Identify areas of focus
• Implement improvements

There is a slide presentation associated with this report.