In order for healthcare leaders to make quick accurate assessments they need to develop skills in four
key areas:

Understanding the messiness of improving healthcare
Determining why they are measuring
Understanding and depicting variation
Translating data into information

It’s important the leaders understand that the complexity of healthcare challenges cannot be adequately understood with simple models or theories; and the awareness that rarely does a single variable drive an outcome.

It’s also important to be clear about the purpose of the measurement efforts and make the distinction between the three faces of performance measurement: accountability, research, and improvement.
Healthcare organizations regularly engage in and use all three approaches to performance measurement. These efforts can become counterproductive by mixing measurement for accountability or research with measurement for improvement. When the aims and methods of the three aspects of performance measurement are mixed, we run the risk of thin slicing the intended measurement aim and increase the probability of arriving at incorrect conclusions.

Source: Robert Lloyd, PhD June 2010; Institute for Health Improvement