Measured

Assignment: Run Charts and Control Chart Worksheets

In this assignment students complete two sets of works sheets, one focused on run charts and the second focused on control charts. These worksheets are designed to help students demonstrate that they have learned both the language of these graphic approaches to tracking quality indicators and also that they can interpret results in the context of clinical practice. I want to thank Karen Schlumpf, an outstanding faculty member and teacher in the Department of Clinical Research and Leadership. Karen had designed worksheets for a research methods class that I taught shortly after arriving at GW. I was impressed with how engaging and compelling students found these but also how well they helped me as the teacher identify students mastery of the material and where additional support was needed. When I started designing OT 8215, it was clear that work sheets would be an effective strategy for students to demonstrate proficiency with run and control charts. Below is the text from the Blackboard page of the assignment and a figure of the first two pages of the run chart worksheet.

OT 8215 Quality Improvement Through Translational Practices

Run Charts and Control Chart Worksheets

For your next assignment, you will be working with run and control charts. I am providing you with two worksheets and two data sets. The first worksheet focuses on run charts, the second worksheet focuses on control charts. The worksheets are really designed as a self-check that you are understanding the material we have covered in class and to demonstrate that you can apply this learning in practice. 

Use the data sets provided to complete Part Two of the second worksheet. The two data sets I am providing you are REAL data from the Nursing Home Compare data.  These data is freely available from the CMS website – although not in a very friendly format.  I have combined the data for the 4 quarters of 2013, 2014, and 2015 for two quality indicators from Nursing Homes in the Commonwealth of Virginia: 

• Percentage of patients reporting moderate or severe pain – Short-stay Skilled Nursing Facility patients
• Percentage of patients who need more assistance with ADLs – Long-stay Nursing Home residents 

I have also provided an Excel spreadsheet with the data and examples of graphs for run and control charts for you to work from.  You will need to follow this to complete the assignment.

One spreadsheet contains the data for the pain indicator and another worksheet has the data for the ADL indicator. This file also includes the state level mean, median, for each indicator by quarter.

You are to choose the data for ONE nursing facility (that’s 12 lines of data, one for each quarter).  It doesn’t matter which facility you choose – whichever one interests you is fine. Do make sure it has 12 data points and that they are reasonable values (you’ll notice some facilities have values in excess of 100%!) … no-one said this was an exact science!

I have provided a worked example to show you how to use the data to develop run and control charts. Your job is to input the data for the facility you have selected and apply new labels.  This isn’t intended to be an exercise in Excel skill but in looking at and interpreting the data. Then complete the worksheets, to demonstrate that you can read the run and control charts and interpret your findings.