Assignment:
Quality Improvement Tools
Developed by Michael Wiggins for use in the HIM program at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Use with permission.
Read each scenario and determine the appropriate quality improvement tool to analyze the data.
Scenario 1
The health care organization uses a contract agent for after-hours x-ray services. The film images are made at anoff-site clinic. The ordering physician reads theimage for immediate treatment needs and forwards the film and preliminary report to the on-site radiologist. Theradiologist looks for discrepancies and omitted findings and sends a final report to theordering physician. The final report should be received within 72 hours. The data on this process are (1) the number of after-hours procedures per month, 2(2) the numberof final reports received within 72 hours per month, and (3) the average turnaround time per month.
Questions
1. Which tool would best illustrate whethera trend exists in the timing of receiving reports?
2. Develop a "dummy" of the above tool, labeling each part.
Scenario 2
A new team has been created. Several different departments are represented, and the team members do not know each other. Each department has a different perspective on the process to be studied.
Question
What tool will help everyone "get on the same page" and understand the process as it currently operates?
Scenario 3
The administrative manager of the perinatal intensive care unit (PICU) feels that the case managers are incorrect about the average length of stay (ALOS) in the PICU being 3.4 days. The manager is basing his "feelings" on his daily observations. The data from the past few months show that the case managers have calculated the ALOS correctly. The manager still thinks something is wrong, "feels" that the "typical" length of say is shorter than 3.4 days, and suspects that the mean is not the appropriate measure to use. The manager has the length of stay data for every patient who has been discharged from the unit for the past year.
Question
What tool will better analyze the data to determine whether the data set is skewed?
Scenario 4
The hospital finance officer reports that the health care organization is spending too much money replacing linens. No data are available about why linens are "lost". Gathering hard data on why linens are lost is impossible (if each piece of linen could be tacked, it would not be lost).
Question
What tool will help you answer the question, "Why are we losing linens?"
Scenario 5
The hospital loses a lot of linen, but no one knows what type of linen (sheets, blankets, towels, etc.) is lost most frequently. As a starting point, data are collected on the amount of money spent replacing each type of linen.
Question
What tool will help focus on the most important issue?
Scenario 6
On the diabetic care unit, monitoring the patients' blood sugar levels helps them to stay in control with proper diet, exercise, and medication. Blood sugar levels are collected on all patients on the diabetic care unit four times each day.
Question
What tool will help to monitor the blood sugar levels for abnormal variations?
Scenario 7
The manager of a pediatric unit is concerned about the prescription orders for a particular medication. Generally, dosage orders for pediatric medications are based on the paint's weight.
Question
Which tool would help to see whether there is a correlation between patient weight and the prescribed dosage of this mediation?