Introducing PI Flex: Your PI Process Should Fit Your Hospital
Your PI process should fit your hospital. Introducing PI Flex: NQS' flexible trauma performance improvement module, plus the PI Planner free tool.
No two hospitals run performance improvement in exactly the same way.
Trauma programs share the goal of improving care, but each hospital defines how its PI process works. A flexible approach should support that local practice with structure, rather than require every team to follow a rigid process.
We’re excited to introduce the NQS PI Flex. PI software that fits your hospital’s unique process.
1. Your PI process should fit your hospital
The core TOPIC components still matter:
- PI plan
- event identification
- levels of review
- committee and peer-review structures
- data management
- action planning
- event resolution
These components provide a foundation for PI work. Each hospital, however, defines how they work within its own PI process.
A Hospital Event may move through different review levels, committee cadences, handoffs, escalation paths, terminology, and closure requirements. One team may use a different set of owners or labels than another. Flexible PI is purposeful support for a team’s own process, including the review steps, terminology, and ways of working the hospital uses.
2. Flexibility should be built on structure
A flexible PI Data Dictionary is the foundation for flexible, structured data capture and reporting.
It can define the fields, terms, and information each hospital’s PI process requires while keeping data structured and reportable. This makes it possible to configure PI data around local practice without treating flexibility as unstructured information.
The objective is to standardize what needs to be consistent while respecting what is unique to each facility.
3. Connected Registry and PI data should support better insight
Shared Hospital Event and Registry data provides a consistent case view and reduces re-creation of information across separate processes.
PI work depends on being able to see the information connected to a Hospital Event across review and follow-up. A static case banner keeps key details in view. Expanded audit history helps users understand what changed and when.
Connected data supports a consistent source of truth across Registry and PI, while making case context and ownership easier to see.
4. Process visibility should document the real PI journey
Every individual case can take a unique path. PI documentation needs to clearly show that path.
The flexible case timeline helps showcase how quickly the team recognized the problem, moved through review, and reached loop closure. It can document and showcase each case’s unique PI process.
The timeline can support documentation expectations described in the Grey Book. It does not make a compliance guarantee.
5. Teams should be able to keep cases moving to the appropriate closure
PI work does not always move in a straight line. Teams may need to save work in progress, gather information, involve the right people, and continue when they are ready.
Hard stops can interrupt work before a team is ready to complete a step. A practical PI process should let teams move cases forward when the right information and decision-makers are available.
The path from event identification through review, assignment, follow-up, and closure can differ by hospital. When no OFI is the appropriate outcome, teams should be able to close Hospital Events without OFIs in one click.
6. Flexible reporting should turn PI work into actionable insight
Reporting must be as flexible as data capture so both individual hospitals and health systems can report on their own fields, process, outcomes, compliance, trends, and accreditation readiness.
Advanced PI reporting & dashboards can help teams get PI insights from the unique fields, processes, and work in their system.
7. Flexibility should scale across health systems
Built for health systems and individual facilities, PI data capture can combine shared standardization with facility-specific information.
Shared data can support standardization across a health system, while facility-specific data can reflect the terms, fields, and information needed by an individual hospital’s PI process.
Introducing PI Flex
PI Flex is NQS’s updated performance-improvement module for trauma teams.
It provides a familiar Registry-like experience with more control over how teams organize and manage PI work. PI Flex is designed for a familiar process with greater flexibility, from Hospital Event identification through the appropriate closure.
See How PI Flex Fits Your Process
See how PI Flex can support the way your hospital works.