Step 5: Obtain Baseline Data ......................................................... Purposes and Uses of Baseline Data Collection in Workflow and

It is interesting that this quote (or another, “You can’t manage what you can’t measure”) is often associated with the management guru Peter Drucker or the statistician and philosopher W. Edwards Deming, when its source remains obscure. It is known, however, that Deming observed that:

…the most important figures that one needs for management are unknown or unknowable, but successful management must nevertheless take account of them. (Out of the Crisis, 1982)

While seemingly these two sayings/quotes are contradictory, they really are not; and they are especially not contradictory in health care. In fact, the dilemma in health care is to improve the use of data for quality improvement and at the same time improve health care in the absence of data that are either very difficult or impossible to measure.