Enhanced PAtient Clinical Streamlining (EPACS): Quality Initiative to Improve Healthcare for New Surgical Outpatient Visits.

PURPOSE: For patients who select a specialty hospital for cancer treatment, the wait time until the initial consultation leaves patients anxious and delays treatment. To improve quality of care, we implemented an enhanced patient clinical streamlining (EPACS) process that establishes an early connection and coordinates care before the first surgical outpatient visit at our specialty cancer center. METHODS: During a pre-visit EPACS phone call to new patients, an advanced practice provider (APP) collected medical history and ordered work-up tests or consultations if feasible. First visit cancellation rate, number of patients who started treatment, time to start of treatment, and satisfaction by the care team and patient were compared between patients treated with versus without EPACS. RESULTS: Among 5062 consecutive new patients, 720 (14%) received an EPACS call and 4342 did not (86%); work-up was ordered pre-visit in 34% and 16%, respectively. Fewer EPACS patients cancelled the first visit (4.6% vs. 12%, p < 0.001), more started treatment (55% vs. 50%, p = 0.037), and their time to treatment was shorter, but not significantly (median 17 vs. 19 days, p = 0.086). Patient interaction was considered to be improved by EPACS by 17 of 17 APPs and 14 of 16 surgeons, and outpatient clinic efficiency by 14 of 17 APPs and 13 of 16 surgeons. EPACS reduced anxiety and increased preparedness for the first visit in 29 of 31 patients. CONCLUSIONS: EPACS improved effectiveness, timeliness, and physician and patient satisfaction with health care at our cancer center.

Developing and implementing a standardized process for global trigger tool application across a large health system.

BACKGROUND: To complement voluntary adverse event reporting, which may detect only specific categories of harms and may represent merely a fraction of actual adverse events, the Adventist Health System (AHS) began using the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) Global Trigger Tool (GTT) to more accurately gauge the number, types, and severity levels of adverse events and developed a centralized process to do so uniformly. METHODS: AHS began using the GTT in 2009 in 25 of its 42 hospitals that used a common electronic medical record (EMR). The common EMR and centralized record review enables AHS to apply the GTT uniformly and provides consistency of data collected. AHS sends quarterly reports to participating facilities to communicate findings and provides case studies illustrating the most egregious harms. Case study recipients are encouraged to further examine patient records, explore events leading to harm, and share the information with process/quality improvement committees, medical executive committees, and boards of directors to identify opportunities for quality improvement. AHS staffing and record review processes have evolved since 2009. RESULTS: A GTT review of 17,295 patient records indicated that adverse events clustered as medication-related glycemic events; medication-related delirium, confusion, or oversedation related to analgesics, sedatives, and muscle relaxants; pressure ulcers; medication-related bleeding; and medication-related skin/mucosal reaction/itching. CONCLUSIONS: The AHS process demonstrates how a large health system uses the GTT to detect harms. Since 2009 AHS has improved and streamlined its reporting, data entry and review processes. AHS used major harms findings to initiate systemwide collaborative improvement projects for glycemic management and pressure ulcers.

The development of an obstetric triage acuity tool.

The purpose of this article is to describe the journey a multicampus hospital system took to improve the obstetric triage process. A review of literature revealed no current comprehensive obstetric acuity tool, and thus our team developed a tool with a patient flow process, revised and updated triage nurse competencies, and then educated the nurses about the new tool and process. Data were collected to assess the functionality of the new process in assigning acuity upon patient arrival, conveying appropriate acuities based on patient complaints, and initiating the medical screening examination, all within prescribed time intervals. Initially data indicated that processes were still not optimal, and re-education was provided for all triage nurses. This improved all data points. The result of this QI project is that our patients are now seen based on their acuity within designated time frames.