Improvement Insights Blog

If you believe that Quality Improvement is all about finding and fixing special causes, you’re just part of the Fix-It Factory. Become part of the Prevention Factory.

“Hi, this is Jay Arthur. I’m here on Ka’anapali Beach in Maui taking a little vacation, but I was thinking about this: “I’ve talked to a lot of people and they seem to think that that they have all these meetings where they fix special causes and they think they’re doing Quality Improvement. They’re not. If you’re just fixing special causes, that’s part of the Fix-It Factory. You want to become part of the Prevention Factory. You want to get out in front of it, you want to go upstream, you want to find a way to prevent those errors from happening. “I have this limiting belief that says that everything can be mistake-proofed: everything. Until proven differently, guess what? I just keep thinking that, and I keep finding ways to mistake-proof things. “So become part of the Prevention Factory and get out of the Fix-It Factory. That’s my Improvement Insight for this week. Let’s go out and improve something this week.”