World Quality Month: right boat but a questionable oar.

I was interested to read in Paul Borawski’s blog about accelerating Quality through recognition of a World Quality Month [see: http://asq.org/blog/2012/11/world-quality-month-accelerating-quality/?goback=.gde_3618260_member_183302883 ] about a rule of thumb that suggests that 70 percent of revenue within healthcare is consumed as Cost of Poor Quality.  Said the other way, only 30 percent of money spent on healthcare is spent constructively.  

Well, as Dana Carvey’s Church Lady would say: “isn’t that special!” .  Count me in the suspicious column.

The Institute of Medicine reports point to a lot of problems in health care, and I would be one to agree.  Complications with respect to medication and hospitalization are disturbing common, and some of the perhaps certainly less than 1percent or less result in serious consequence including new or prolonged illness, or even death.  But the vast majority are either on minimal or negligiable consequence.  This is not meant in any way to trivialize the concept that people should not be made unwell by those committed to the very concept, but not of that adds up to anything close to 70 percent.  

We do have problems in healthcare and one of them is it that as it is a huge collective, broadly beyond broadly diverse based on professional, physical, geographic, social, and financial factors.  Trying to develop generalizable information would at best be near impossible, and probably a lot closer to totally impossible.

In my own little area of medical laboratory quality, I have been able to examine the impacts on CPQ in relatively sophisticated laboratories, by which I mean laboratories that can monitor costs and errors.  After looking at about 1000 reported errors in one facility, I was able to calculate that depending at what point of the testing cycle an error was detected an error took from 30 to greater than 1000 minutes to correct.  The average time, when all errors were combined was about 130 minutes per error.  If applied to a small laboratory this could result in as much as 30 percent of human resource time being spend on working on the consequences of previous error,  In a very large laboratory it would be much closer to 11 percent.  Both of these are a terrible waste of time and energy and money, but both are also a lot lower than 70 percent.  

While I am interested in Paul's comment, I am a little suspicious about the accuracy and precision.

But since I am on a roll, let me raise another thought (the word “concern” would be too harsh and to excessive).  For many years the world has celebrated Quality in relative silence.  World Standards Day, which has existed since 1970 has been in relative obscurity until perhaps the last 5 or 6 years.  World Standards Cooperation has been around since 2001, but has become more widely known since it has created is academic day focus.

As much as I like to party and celebrate, I wonder if the creation of a World Quality Month will enhance or compete with these other activities, and I wonder if the Quality community will achieve better of more positive recognition based on this additional month, or just more confusion.  

Now I also understand that Quality is a lot broader than Standards, but there is an important connection between Quality and W. Edwards Deming and World Standards Day, since October 14^th is also Deming’s birthday.   

How will we respond when another groups within the Quality arena decide to declare World Accreditation Day, or World Proficiency Testing month, or perhaps the decade for World Quality Educator Programs.   And maybe some will consider it important to create awareness through World Lean Day or World Six Sigma Day, or we will all want to celebrate Walter Shewhart on World Quality Control Week.   And maybe the Committee on Consumer Policy (COPOLC) will move forward on World Customer Appreciation Day.   

Actually I think that some of these are actually interesting ideas.

To be clear, I think that communication is always important to raise awareness, and raised awareness through greater communication results in more and better (?) activity.  And bringing awareness through multiple events can be very enhancing, provided that they don’t end up in competition and as a distraction.

But that is just my opinion.

PS: Paul, maybe you want to re-think that 70 percent number.  And if it is true, I won’t be trilled, but it is better to know than to be oblivious. 

World Standards Cooperation Academic Day.

It is amazing how the calendar fills up.  In an era when budgets are tight and travel is still beleaguered with extreme security, there is always another international opportunity for Quality connections.  Today I was introduced to World Standards Cooperation (WSC) Academic Day (WSCAD) which will be held in Bali Indonesia in May 2012.  In many respects this should probably be a “must do” on my calendar. 

World Standard Cooperation Day is different from World Standards Day.  The latter, has occurred each year since 1970.  It is said that October 14^th was selected for WSD because it commemorates the meeting held in London in 1946 at which it was decided to develop and organization committed to international standards.  That may well be true, but I suspect that the selection of that day was not totally by accident since it also happens to be W. Edwards Deming’s birthday (October 14, 1900).  In Canada we will be having an event in Ottawa near October 14^th (this year the 14^th falls on a Sunday).  Traditionally WSD has a poster competition.  While it has not been announced yet for 2012, I have been thinking about possible entries already. 

World Standard Cooperation was added to WSD in 2001.  It was developed as a joint effort between the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), in order to strengthen and advance the voluntary consensus-based international standards systems.  It is an annual event marked with conferences and workshops.  We are looking to hold an event in 2013. 

WSC is not tied to a specific day or to a specific topic, other than the generic topic of standards promotion.  For example, in 2012 I am aware of at least 2 events, one being on application of standardization in the auto industry.  The other event is the subject of this posting.

World Standards Cooperation Academic Day (WSCAD) was started in 2010 at which time it was an Academic Week hosted in Geneva in July.  Last year it was held as an Academic Day in Hangzhou China in June and this year will be held in Bali Indonesia in May.  The purpose of WSCAD is to “promote and foster dialogue and cooperation between academic institutions and the international standards community”.  This is a brilliant idea with huge potential.  It is such a good idea that if it didn’t already exist I would invent it myself, and in a way I have with the development of the UBC Program Office for Laboratory Quality Management and our Continuing Professional Development (CPD) approved Certificate Course in Laboratory Quality Management, and our upcoming Masters in Laboratory Quality Management, and our Quality Weekend Workshops.

International Standardization is a perfect fit with academia.  It is a topic that I am strongly committed to.  In 2009 I gave a presentation at an ASQ conference in Vancouver entitled “Medical Laboratory Quality: a valuable university based endeavour” making the point that Quality has elements of research, education and outreach or service which meets all the needs of a successful academic program.   My personal experience was that over 27 years we had generated sustained growth, activity, funding, education, service, research and development, and collaborations.  Despite that my observation at that time was that, at least in Canada, universities were quite resistant to the validity of Quality as a topic-of-interest, in part because it was new, and it was trapped in a chicken-and-egg dynamic.  There was no tangible research funding for Quality issues because there was little interest, and there was little interest because there was not tangible funding. 

That has changed and in the last week we have been pre-occupied with completing grants submissions which if successful will provide support to the POLQM. 

Now we find out that over the last 3 years there has been an international movement to support and promote exactly what we have been doing here in our little silo, disconnected and independent of most other universities (University of Leuven in Belgium taken as one exception.)  Hooray!!

I may not be able to attend this year (one of my sons has his graduation ceremony on the same day) but I will likely find someone to attend in our stead.  This is too big a deal for us to miss.