Book excerpt: Written by an internationally-recognized expert in the field of quality management, this text is an essential guide for understanding how to plan and implement a successful quality measurement program in your healthcare facility. It begins by presenting an overview of the context for quality measurement, the forces influencing the demand for quality reform, how to listen to the voice of the customer, and the characteristics of quality that customers value most. Students will also learn how to select and define indicators to collect data and how to organize data into a dashboard that can provide feedback on progress toward quality measurement. Finally, this book explores how to analyze the data by detailing how variation lives in your data, and whether this variation is acceptable.