Developing the Capacity for Rapid-Cycle Improvement at a Large Freestanding Children's Hospital.

BACKGROUND: To develop the capacity for rapid-cycle improvement at the unit level, a large freestanding children's hospital designated 2 inpatient units with normal patient loads and workforce as pilot "Innovation Units" where frontline staff was trained to lead rigorous improvement portfolios. METHODS: Frontline staff received improvement training, and interdisciplinary teams brainstormed ideas for tests of change. Ideas were prioritized using an impact-effort evaluation and an assessment of how they aligned with high-level goals. A template for each test summarized the following: the opportunity for improvement, the test being conducted, dates for the tests, driver diagrams, metrics to measure effects, baseline data, results, findings, and next steps. Successful interventions were implemented and disseminated to other units. RESULTS: Multidisciplinary staff generated 150 improvement ideas and Innovation Units collectively ran >40 plan-do-study-act cycles. Of the 10 distinct improvement projects, elements of all 10 were deemed "successful" and fully implemented on the unit, and elements from 8 were spread to other units. More than 3 years later, elements of all of the successful improvements are still in practice in some form on the units, and each unit has tested >20 additional improvement ideas, using multiple plan-do-study-act cycles to refine them. CONCLUSIONS: The Innovation Unit model successfully engaged frontline staff in improvement work and established a sustainable system and framework for managing rigorous improvement portfolios at the unit level. Other hospitals and health care delivery settings may find our quality improvement approach helpful, especially because it is rooted in the microsystem of care delivery.

Front-line ordering clinicians: matching workforce to workload.

BACKGROUND: Matching workforce to workload is particularly important in healthcare delivery, where an excess of workload for the available workforce may negatively impact processes and outcomes of patient care and resident learning. Hospitals currently lack a means to measure and match dynamic workload and workforce factors. OBJECTIVES: This article describes our work to develop and obtain consensus for use of an objective tool to dynamically match the front-line ordering clinician (FLOC) workforce to clinical workload in a variety of inpatient settings. METHODS: We undertook development of a tool to represent hospital workload and workforce based on literature reviews, discussions with clinical leadership, and repeated validation sessions. We met with physicians and nurses from every clinical care area of our large, urban children's hospital at least twice. RESULTS: We successfully created a tool in a matrix format that is objective and flexible and can be applied to a variety of settings. We presented the tool in 14 hospital divisions and received widespread acceptance among physician, nursing, and administrative leadership. The hospital uses the tool to identify gaps in FLOC coverage and guide staffing decisions. DISCUSSION: Hospitals can better match workload to workforce if they can define and measure these elements. The Care Model Matrix is a flexible, objective tool that quantifies the multidimensional aspects of workload and workforce. The tool, which uses multiple variables that are easily modifiable, can be adapted to a variety of settings.