Conceptual framework to estimate continuous improvement project success in hospitals

Two main topics related to continuous improvement projects (CIPs) in hospitals are addressing in this paper: critical success factors (CSF) and CIP outcomes. First, CSFs for CIPs are those factors highly related to CIP success. A previous investigation in this topic suggested the presence of 53 factors related to CIP success in hospitals. Second, CIP success could be measured with CIP hard outcomes (e.g. percentage of goal achievement and percentage of target area performance improvement) and CIP soft outcomes (e.g. CIP target area perceives impact). Recently, eleven survey items were used to measure CIP target area perceives impact (CIP soft outcome). The purpose of this paper is to create a conceptual framework to assess the relationship between 53 factors related to CIP success in hospitals (independent variable) and two CIP outcomes (dependent variables: two soft outcomes). In order to address this aim, the research team collected 112 valid surveys responses from CIP leaders in hospitals and conducted seven exploratory factors analysis. The final conceptual framework was constructed using the input-process-output approach and consisted of 13 independent construct variables and two dependent construct variables.