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Table 1 Examples of feedback interventions used in health care

From: Clinical Performance Feedback Intervention Theory (CP-FIT): a new theory for designing, implementing, and evaluating feedback in health care based on a systematic review and meta-synthesis of qualitative research

Example

A group of clinicians choose a clinical topic on which to focus (e.g. sepsis, frailty), determine standards of care relating to that topic (e.g. patients with sepsis should receive antibiotics within 1 hour of diagnosis, all patients with frailty should have an annual medication review), then collect data to measure their current performance (e.g. from medical records), and calculate the proportion of patients meeting the standards. They present their findings to colleagues in a team meeting, and as a group they identify and implement changes. They re-measure their performance at a later date.

Health managers decide goals that are most important to their organisation (e.g. reducing hospital admissions, increasing vaccination uptake, reducing medication safety errors) and collect data to measure their current performance (e.g. from patient registries or administrative data). To account for the influence of patient characteristics, the results are adjusted for age and sex. These data are sent to health professionals as reports (e.g. electronic documents) and may also be made publically available. There may be financial rewards associated with achieving particular levels of performance.

Population-level data from electronic sources are automatically extracted and analysed across a range of topics (e.g. rates of antibiotic prescription, proportion of hypertensive patients with controlled blood pressure) to identify patients not receiving “optimal” care (e.g. from electronic health records). Results are continuously updated, and communicated via software to health professionals (e.g. as bar charts or line graphs via websites or desktop applications).