Overview

"Forget everything you've learned in any ""statistics"" courses you've ever attended. This groundbreaking book will introduce a ""mind set,"" not a ""tool set"" to effectively utilize data to improve your practice. This totally revised and streamlined edition presents an everyday organizational language to understand the many guises of variation and a framework to react appropriately. A deeper understanding of variation is far more important than statistical techniques when solving quality improvement problems in a healthcare practice. While defined projects are still necessary for organizational improvement, but they must be seen in the context of cultural transformation. Data Sanity will catalyze this process and the use of everyday data to create the time to make effective, more strategic projects. You will learn elegantly simple - and counterintuitive - techniques that can create group consensus in seconds. As a result, you can lead deeper, more productive conversations about data and quality issues, which can be the surprising catalyst for true organizational excellence."

Full Product Details

9781568294384

Table of Contents

Reviews

This is another outstanding effort by a passionate and dedicated professional in the quality improvement field. Written in an honest, straightforward, and engaging style with lots of humor. This book will be of great value to anyone wanting to improve the quality of medical care in a group practice setting of any size and scope. Packed with high value information and teachings on how to critically assess the avalanche of data and reports we all receive these days. A fresh approach grounded in critical thinking and a healthy irreverent attitude that physicians, senior leaders, and others focused on quality improvement will greatly appreciate. Worth every penny. - Stephen F. Tarzynski, M.D. . Data Sanity is the best book on quality and statistical concepts I have ever read. It is clearly written, comprehensive, and integrative. Although the primary target audience is the medical profession, it is appropriate for anyone who is interested in quality and process improvement and for any type of organization. You will love how Davis Balestracci, one of the best communicators I know, demystifies quality improvement and statistics and makes them accessible for anyone. Particularly important is Davis' discussions of how to avoid the pitfalls of statistics and data interpretation. If statistics has driven you crazy in the past, this book will make it understandable and, as the title says, will create data sanity so that you and your organization can turn your potentially valuable data into information, knowledge, and wisdom. - Dean R. Spitzer, Ph.D. Author of Transforming Performance Measurement . I've been involved with quality improvement in the healthcare world since 1988. During that time I've purchased and read close to 100 books on quality management, lean, Six Sigma, performance improvement, statistical thinking, and systems thinking. Davis's wonderful book blows the rest off the book shelf. I use it as the only text book in the grad school course I teach on Quality Management. It's the book I've asked all the members of my leadership team to read. It does a wonderful job of making complex subjects understandable by mere mortals. The entertaining and irreverent writing style makes the principles come alive. I wholeheartedly recommend this book for anyone involved in leadership, performance improvement, systems transformation, or who just wants to make accurate meaning out of their data. - Mike Taigman

"""This is another outstanding effort by a passionate and dedicated professional in the quality improvement field. Written in an honest, straightforward, and engaging style with lots of humor. This book will be of great value to anyone wanting to improve the quality of medical care in a group practice setting of any size and scope. Packed with high value information and teachings on how to critically assess the avalanche of data and reports we all receive these days. A fresh approach grounded in critical thinking and a healthy irreverent attitude that physicians, senior leaders, and others focused on quality improvement will greatly appreciate. Worth every penny."" - Stephen F. Tarzynski, M.D. . ""Data Sanity is the best book on quality and statistical concepts I have ever read. It is clearly written, comprehensive, and integrative. Although the primary target audience is the medical profession, it is appropriate for anyone who is interested in quality and process improvement and for any type of organization. You will love how Davis Balestracci, one of the best communicators I know, demystifies quality improvement and statistics and makes them accessible for anyone. Particularly important is Davis' discussions of how to avoid the pitfalls of statistics and data interpretation. If statistics has driven you crazy in the past, this book will make it understandable and, as the title says, will create ""data sanity"" so that you and your organization can turn your potentially valuable data into information, knowledge, and wisdom."" - Dean R. Spitzer, Ph.D. Author of Transforming Performance Measurement . ""I've been involved with quality improvement in the healthcare world since 1988. During that time I've purchased and read close to 100 books on quality management, lean, Six Sigma, performance improvement, statistical thinking, and systems thinking. Davis's wonderful book blows the rest off the book shelf. I use it as the only text book in the grad school course I teach on Quality Management. It's the book I've asked all the members of my leadership team to read. ""It does a wonderful job of making complex subjects understandable by mere mortals. The entertaining and irreverent writing style makes the principles come alive. I wholeheartedly recommend this book for anyone involved in leadership, performance improvement, systems transformation, or who just wants to make accurate meaning out of their data."" - Mike Taigman"

Author Information

"Davis Balestracci Jr., MS, began his career as an internal industrial statistical consultant, most significantly with 3M, where he received several corporate awards for his innovative teaching and applications of statistical methods. After being exposed to W. Edwards Deming's philosophy in 1983, his interests evolved to a broader application of statistics and cultural psychology to develop leadership capabilities to transform organizations. Since 1992, his primary involvement has been with healthcare. Davis holds a bachelor of science degree in chemical engineering and a master of science degree in statistics, yet describes himself as a ""right-brained"" statistician. (He is a pipe organist and has also done graduate work in orchestral and choral conducting.)He is well known for his provocative, challenging, yet humorous and down-to-earth public speaking style. He is a regular speaker at Institute for Healthcare Improvement forums in the United States and Europe. People attending his presentations appreciate his acute awareness of the daily realities of implementing statistical approaches to quality and cultural transformation, including the inherent frustrations of dealing with ""those darn humans.""In 1995, at the invitation of Dr. Donald Berwick, Davis participated in a project sponsored by the Harvard Institute for International Development. He was part of a team that taught healthcare improvement methods to 80 participants from Egypt, Israel, Palestine, Morocco and Jordan.In 2001, he became an independent consultant, naming his company Harmony Consulting, LLC, to reflect his unique synthesis of left-brain (analytical) and right-brain (psychological) approaches to quality, as well as ""the passion of Beethoven composing symphonies"" with which he approaches his work. (When visiting the consulting firm's website, www.davisdatasanity.com, select the ""brain"" in the left margin to view a demonstration of this concept.)In addition to his domestic work in the United States (36 states), he has consulted and given seminars in Israel, Palestine, Vietnam, Norway, Denmark, New Zealand and Australia. From 2003-07, he developed a special relationship with the national health services of England and Wales doing extensive statistical education as a major part of government-sponsored improvement initiatives. Davis was the chair of the Statistics Division of the American Society for Quality in 2003-04 and since January 2004 has regularly shared his unique approach writing regularly for Quality Digest."

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