Pareto Charts Paper

Two total quality management tools that can be effectively used in a hospital setting are Pareto chart and fishbone diagrams. The problem in most organization is deciding on which problems to tackle first. Each person will have a different reason for wanting to address one issue over another. By using Pareto charts, the team will be able to use data in trying to figure out which areas should be addressed first (Goetsch & Davis, 2010). Pareto charts are useful in ranking problems from biggest to smallest (Goetsch & Davis, 2010). With this type of chart, you can easily spot the problem that is causing the most issues in the hospital. The Pareto principle is a theory that supports 80% of the problems from a specific situation are caused by 20% of the same issues (Whatis.com, …show more content…
This tool is useful in a hospital setting in addressing the most issues in a short amount of time, and helping the staff members to become proactive workers instead of reactive workers (Goetsch & Davis, 2010). For example: a hospital could use this chart to find out the most common errors that occurs in the laboratory. By determining the biggest number of errors in the lab, the hospital will them be able to implement a process improvement plan for making the laboratory more efficient by reducing the number of common errors. Problems with using Pareto charts: data integrity, inaccurate problem scoring, and disregard for amount of time (Whatis.com, 2015). The way that data is pulled will determine if the results of the collection are valid (Goetsch & Davis, 2010). If the data is skewed in anyway, the results of the Pareto chart will not be accurate. The data scoring will also not reveal the problems that are most important, but rather problems that occur most often. If a serious problem has occurred, it may or may not be in the data selection for the