Which term describes the ongoing effort to improve safety and quality in healthcare organizations?

• A. Risk management
• B. Credentialing
• C. Quality improvement (QI)
• D. Compliance auditing

Answer: (C)

Continuous improvement of patient safety and care quality is driven by quality improvement efforts that continually monitor care processes, collect data, test changes on a small scale, and measure results before spreading successful changes across the organization. This ongoing, systematic approach—often using cycles like Plan-Do-Study-Act—focuses on making care safer and higher in quality over time, which is exactly what the question describes.

Risk management looks at identifying and reducing risks to prevent harm, but it isn’t the ongoing, organization-wide effort to improve processes. Credentialing is about verifying that staff have the right qualifications. Compliance auditing checks adherence to rules and standards, but doesn’t inherently drive the continuous improvement of safety and quality across the system.