Defect-free compliance tells us how many of process audits had at least 1 defect.
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It is best practice in quality improvement to strive for defect-free compliance with methods and techniques that have consistently shown superior results. Some hospitals call this perfect patient care. Qualaris tools should be designed with the best practices embedded and (ideally) everyone should follow those methods without deviation.

With this in mind, Qualaris analyzes data and creates reports based on defect-free compliance calculations. This means that if even one item on an observation audit is out of compliance, then the entire audit (instance) is out of compliance. If a unit completes 9 observations and 3 of the audits had something in the process that was out of compliance, then that unit's defect-free compliance rate is 66%.

Numerator 6 (perfect audits)

Denominator 9 (total audits)

Qualaris recommends that hospitals begin with a goal of 90% defect-free compliance for all their improvement projects. Of course the ideal is 100% compliance with best practices, and many hospitals will choose to set or move their goals higher toward that ideal as they improve compliance with these practices.