Statistical process control (SPC) tools such as control charts have been widely used in the manufacturing industry for a long time. Though SPC is relatively new to the healthcare practitioners, yet in recent times, it is increasingly being used in healthcare to aid in process understanding, assess process stability and identify changes that indicate either improvement or deterioration in quality. Those working in healthcare today are challenged more than ever before to quickly and efficiently learn from data to improve their services and delivery of care. In this paper, an attempt has been made to provide an overview of control charts applications for common healthcare data and also to illustrate a new type of statistical process control charts called ‘g’ type and ‘h’ type charts for monitoring the number of  cases between hospital acquired infections or other healthcare adverse events such as heart surgery complications, catheter-related infection, contaminated needle sticks, medication errors, surgical site infections, etc. These types of charts are simple to use and exhibit significantly greater detection power over conventional Binomial or Poisson approaches specifically for infrequent events and very low defect rates.

statistical process control, control chart, g-type and h-type charts, healthcare.