1. All too often, people do not plan the evaluation phase from the very beginning of the project and/or do not include any budget allocations for it. Remember that evaluation will be your best ally in supporting the decision-making process.
2. Evaluation is not something needed only for managers, but for physicians and health care professionals as well, who should be playing a leading role and/or at least collaborating in the process.
3. When an evaluation process is being planned, it is generally done only for the short term (e.g. after the project is implemented) and not as part of a continuous process.
4. Focus on your target interventions and outcomes: Do not be tempted to track too many indicators.
5. Be careful when using an external firm or a research project to carry out your evaluation. Make sure that you will be able to replicate the evaluation at a later date in your institution.
6. Do not be tempted to evaluate aspects of your practice that have already proved effective as part of an RCT. For example, if your intervention is about increasing referrals to your pulmonary rehabilitation (PR) program, you do not necessarily have to extend the evaluation to see if the PR program benefits the patient's quality of life. This has already been demonstrated in many studies. However, you may still want to validate how your PR program compares to other programs that have been reported in the literature, and in this context, such an additional evaluation could be relevant.

Evaluation is the systematic gathering, analysis and reporting of data about an intervention/
program/pathway to assist in decision-making.