Quality Management Practices in Neuroradiology: The Role of QC, QA, and QI

Quality management in neuroradiology aims to achieve consistent excellent performance in patient care by integrating three complementary practices: quality control (QC), quality assurance (QA), and quality improvement (QI). These practices originated with automobile manufacturing and have been adopted by other industries including software engineering and healthcare delivery. QC is outcome-focused reactive detection of defects in delivered products/services, serving as a foundational layer for quality management. QA is process-focused proactive prevention of defects in delivered products/services through optimized standardized workflows. QI is feedback-focused adaptive use of data to improve both QC and QA processes over time. Our educational objective is to help define and illustrate the application and interrelation of QC, QA, and QI in neuroradiology towards achieving excellence in neuroimaging patient care.