In some practice settings, Diplomates may not have access to colleagues with similar clinical interests or may not share similar quality gaps. In these and other situations, individual PQI participation is appropriate.

Self-designed projects are best suited for individual PQI participants. These are conceived and formatted by the Diplomate to fulfill a perceived or documented quality issue in his or her practice. 

Example of an Individual PQI

One Diplomate writes: "Long clinic wait times were decreased through dedicated data collection leading to implementation of adjusted clinic template. I collected data on each patient’s visit to my clinic during six fully-booked clinics. Specifically I collected the time from when they checked in until the time I went to see them, what type of visit (follow-up versus a new or consultative patient), and whether I was seeing the patient with a trainee or a mid-level provider. This was mapped by the time of day and graphically represented. I was able to identify a progressive increase in the time delay, demonstrating that my clinic template was perhaps too aggressive for my patient population. Solutions were generated by presenting the data to my scheduler and to my nurses and we agreed to simply insert a break at lunch, something previously not in my template, to give us an opportunity to 'catch up.' After implementation we continued to track the data and demonstrated a reduction in patient wait times greater than 1 hour."