In quality improvement, which tool helps identify patterns over time?

A run chart is a vital tool in quality improvement as it displays data points over time, making it effective for identifying trends, patterns, and variations. By plotting individual data points in chronological order, a run chart allows teams to visualize how a process performs over time, which is essential for monitoring performance and assessing the impact of interventions or changes made within the organization.

The run chart helps to differentiate between random fluctuations and significant changes over a period, enabling healthcare professionals and quality improvement teams to recognize whether a process is stable or if there are shifts that require intervention.

Other tools like flowcharts, scatter diagrams, and Pareto charts serve distinct purposes. For instance, flowcharts illustrate the steps in a process, scatter diagrams depict the relationship between two variables, and Pareto charts highlight the most significant factors in a dataset based on the Pareto principle. While these tools are valuable in their contexts, they do not specifically focus on showcasing trends over time, which is the unique strength of the run chart.