MISSION

To safeguard our community’s health by achieving operational excellence through continuous quality improvement (CQI).

PURPOSE

Provide guidance on how to deploy, manage, and review CQI throughout the organization.

The Public Health Accreditation Board (PHAB) requires that each accredited local health jurisdiction has in place a performance management system that requires establishing goals and measures, monitoring and evaluating performance, identifying and implementing improvement strategies and reporting results. The purpose of the Tarrant County Public Health (TCPH) department’s Performance Management System (PMS) is to provide structures, roles, and processes that:

1. Link and coordinate our planning, performance monitoring, and continuous quality improvement (CQI) efforts so they will be efficient and effective.
2. Document our efforts to be accountable to the public we serve.
3. Strengthen the community’s understanding of and perceived value for public health by helping the Department measure and report on the effectiveness of its programs.

The performance management standards include the TCPH Strategic Plan, the Public Health Ten Essential Services, and opportunities identified by PHAB process.

TCPH is committed to continuously improving all aspects of its operations by systematically evaluating the quality of the programs and processes to deliver high quality services to the communities we serve.

Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) in public health is the use of a deliberate and defined improvement process, such as Plan-Do-Check-Act, which is focused on activities that are responsive to community needs and improving population health.      

It refers to a continuous and ongoing effort to achieve measurable improvements in the efficiency, effectiveness, performance, accountability, outcomes, and other indicators of quality in services or processes which achieve equity and improve the health of the community.

TCPH CQI initiatives consist of two parts; the overall policy and the CQI plan. The policy states the importance of continuously improving quality in services and the way TCPH conducts processes. The implementation plan contains the procedures or basic guide on how TCPH will manage, deploy, and review quality throughout the organization. The main focus is on how TCPH will work through the process of quality improvement at an overall department wide level as well as specific program levels.