Establishing Consistency

Variation in care is not unique to UCLA Health. But we want to use our larger redesign efforts to eliminate it from our system. We work with our doctors and nurses to provide the right treatments to the right patients at the right times.

Learn more about redesigning care. Or read coverage about Finding the Right Path at UCLA.

Benefits of Standardization

We believe that consistent, evidence-based and standardized care improves quality for our patients. We want to reliably provide the best possible care at the right time for every disease.

Our job is to support and equip our doctors so they can identify care variations and address them in a way that makes sense to them. By doing so, we can avoid unwarranted costs while:

• Leaving room for appropriate exceptions, customization and flexibility. We remove random variations that are not in patients’ best interests, while preserving our doctors’ clinical judgment and autonomy.
• Allowing performance measurement and continuous improvement. Without this standard baseline of care, we could not properly evaluate innovations for their safety and effectiveness.
• Providing a framework for establishing the best approach when strong evidence does not yet exist. In such cases, our medical teams:
  • Ask patients about their goals and preferences
  • Agree on a protocol and apply it systematically
  • Track the data and learn from the results
• Encouraging tailored care. Medical teams start with a standardized approach and baseline data on patients. Then, they evaluate responses at regular intervals and potentially adapt care.