Many ambulatory surgery centers assign a single staff member or just a few employees to oversee performance improvement programs. Lakes Surgery Center in West Bloomfield, Mich., went to the opposite extreme: involving ever member of the roughly 40-person staff in PI.
Early in 2007, the ASC's management developed four PI programs focusing around critical patient safety issues and created teams to address these areas, says Jennifer Butterfield, clinical nurse manager of the ASC. "Over the years the teams have changed to meet our identified areas for performance improvement," she says. The teams are:
1. Hand hygiene team
2. Chart completeness team
3. Medication management team
4. Time-out team
"These teams are tasked with finding ways to improve those four elements; we looked at them as some of our weaknesses," says Ms. Butterfield. "Every single person is on a team at this facility. Having eight people on a hand hygiene team from four different departments (business office, pre-op, post-op and operating room) — you're going to get some really good ideas and those people become champions (for their program) and really promote those ideas."
The teams, comprised of around 8-10 people, typically meet quarterly to discuss their assigned program. So far, the PI program teams format has been a huge success for the surgery center, which is why it continues today. Each team has suggested PI ideas the ASC has implemented.
For example, the hand hygiene team developed a hygiene-related flier which now goes on the back of every patient's discharge instructions. The flier essentially explains to patients that when they go home after surgery, they need to wash and dry their hands before, for example, putting drops in their eyes or touching a wound.
"We're giving them an actual piece of paper to take home that helps them post-operatively," says Ms. Butterfield. "We didn't have this before, and now there's less chance of our patients getting an infection post surgery because they have this educational flier."
Use of the flier has helped improve patient safety and satisfaction, but implementation of teams' suggestions translates over to staff satisfaction as well.
"Their ideas are listened to by the managers and we help them implement their suggestions, which I think gives them a really good feeling," says Ms. Butterfield. "They become motivated to do better the next time because they are part of the solution for improved patient care and their work is recognized and appreciated by the patients, physicians, peers and management. "
Learn more about Lakes Surgery Center.
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Read more about performance improvement:
- 4 Steps to Implementing a Robust Performance Improvement Process
- Review: Infection Prevention Approach to New CMS Requirements for Ambulatory Surgery Centers