Improving quality in healthcare : questioning the work for effective change / Murray Anderson-Wallace and Nick Downham.

Includes index.

Context -- The history of quality in healthcare -- Cultures of quality -- Understanding variation-tensions and dilemmas -- Demand, capacity and utilisation -- Understanding failure demand -- Principles to avoid failure demand -- Defragmenting to integrate -- Avoiding the specialist, generalist and citizen muddle -- Supporting human systems at work -- Understanding need -- Conclusion.

"This book is for anyone who is interested in improving quality in healthcare. It will appeal to those who are traditionally responsible for quality matters, as well as practicing clinicians and leaders. Unusually, it will also be as relevant to those who have the keenest interest in the quality of care - interested citizens.
It is a deliberate antidote to the anti-intellectual, QI tool driven, mechanistic approach that still dominates much of healthcare quality improvement work. The authors - both of whom have extensive experience of working in and around quality issues in healthcare at a national, regional and local level - challenge such approaches, which they believe fail to take account of patient and organisational context and invite reductionism, cherry picking, atomisation of complex issues, leading ultimately to simplistic and unsustainable outcomes"-- Amazon.com.