Samantha Riley on Making Data Count and Metrics for Healthcare and Beyond

NHS England, Author of "Making Data Count"

Notes and links: https://www.leanblog.org/413

My guest for Episode #413 of the Lean Blog Interviews podcast is Samantha Riley, the Deputy Director of Intensive Support for NHS England and Improvement. Sam is the author of an amazing publication called “Making Data Count,” which you can read and experience freely online.

Sam and I are “Twitter buddies,” as she said and I follow and enjoy her tweets, especially those using the hashtag #PlotTheDots. We are both users and teachers of (and advocates for) the use of Statistical Process Control charts (aka XmR Charts or Process Behavior Charts) as taught by the statistician Don Wheeler.

Topics, questions, and links related to today's episode include:

• What's Sam's professional background and why it's OK that she's not a statistician
• Why are RAG (Red Amber Green) charts or tables insufficient?
• How do you have the conversation with boards, executives, and managers about RAG being insufficient?
  • How to bring people to the table for this learning?
• Why are up/down comparisons and color coding leading to “knee jerk reactions”?
• What is “spuddling“? Why is that a problem?

Spuddling: To make a lot of fuss about trivial things, as if it were important.

• 50% of boards have changed their approach — how has that come to be?
• What language do you use about improving a predictable system?
• How did you get exposed to Statistical Process Control?
• What led to “Making Data Count“?
• What was “the ham sandwich incident”?
  • How can we use these charts to look at our weight and health?
• How to articulate the benefits of SPC?
• Her article in BMJ Leader: National Health Service (NHS) trust boards adopt statistical process control reporting: the impact of the Making Data Count Training Programme

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