Manage Quality Initiatives

Quality Initiatives in Theator help surgical departments track and improve adherence to evidence-based best practices. Through the Surgical Excellence section, you can monitor how your department is progressing toward specific quality goals over time.

What Are Quality Initiatives?

Quality Initiatives are department-level programs designed to improve surgical outcomes by promoting the adoption of specific best practices. Each initiative is tied to one or more SPEQs (Surgical Practice Evaluation and Quality metrics) and provides a clear view of how well those practices are being followed across your team.

How to View Quality Initiatives

1. Navigate to Surgical Excellence: From the main navigation, go to Surgical Excellence and select Initiatives.
2. Browse Active Initiatives: You will see a list of current quality initiatives for your department. Each initiative displays its name, the associated SPEQs, and an overview of progress.
3. Select an Initiative: Click on any initiative to view detailed metrics, including adoption rates, trends over time, and breakdowns by procedure type.

Creating a New Initiative

Any team member can launch a quality initiative to track a best practice across a group of surgeons.

1. Open the Initiatives view: Go to Surgical Excellence and select Initiatives, then select Create Initiative.
2. Name it: Enter an Initiative name and an optional Description.
3. Choose who is tracked: Under Participants, add the surgeons, departments, or sites the initiative should measure. For best results, use a single participant type — mixing types can result in very few or no cases being measured.
4. Select the practices to track: Under Surgical Practices, select the best practices to track and set an adoption goal for each.
5. Set the timeline: Choose a Start Date — the baseline the initiative measures progress from.
6. (Optional) Subscribe to reports: Turn on Subscribe me to periodic reports to receive weekly or monthly progress emails.
7. Select Create Initiative.

Creating an initiative with the AI Assistant

You can also ask the AI Assistant to set one up — for example, "I want to kick off a quality initiative for my MIGS group." The assistant drafts the initiative, including the target practice, participants, and start date, and asks you to confirm before it is created. Nothing is created until you approve.

Managing Participants

All members of your venue can view initiatives in Surgical Excellence. Participants define who is measured by the initiative — the surgeons, departments, or sites whose cases count toward the adoption metrics.

1. Open the initiative and select Edit.
2. Under Participants, add or remove surgeons, departments, or sites.
3. Update the name, description, or start date if needed, then select Save Changes.

Participants must belong to your organization; you cannot add users from another venue.

Understanding Initiative Metrics

Each initiative provides key data points to help you assess performance:

• Adoption Rate -- The percentage of eligible cases where the targeted best practice was followed.
• Trend Over Time -- A visual chart showing how adoption has changed across a defined time period.
• Compliance Breakdown -- A detailed view of which procedures and surgeons are contributing to the initiative's progress.

Tips for Using Quality Initiatives

• Review regularly to stay informed about your department's quality improvement efforts.
• Use trends to identify whether new training or process changes are having an impact.
• Combine with case review by drilling into individual cases linked to an initiative for deeper analysis.

Quality Initiatives provide a structured way to drive continuous improvement and ensure that surgical best practices become a consistent part of your department's workflow.

What's Next?

• What is an SPEQ? — Understand SPEQs and how they drive quality
• Exploring Best Practices and the Catalog — Browse the best practices library
• Getting Started with the AI Assistant — Ask the assistant to create initiatives for you