Tools to expedite the development of treatment plans

Tools to expedite the development of treatment plans

Quality improvement strategies can be used to modify existing health care processes to reduce patient wait times. We undertook a quality improvement project to reduce the time between new patients' initial visits and the finalization of their treatment plans. Initiation of treatment of new pati...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Quality management in health care Vol. 23; no. 2; pp. 70 - 75
Main Authors: Chavez, Adriana L, Singh, Prachee, Aleman, Andrea A, Anderson, Jaime E, Jernigan, Colleen, Ravi, Vinod
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: United States Lippincott Williams & Wilkins Ovid Technologies 01-04-2014
Subjects:
Causality
Clinical outcomes
Health administration
Humans
Medical Oncology - methods
Medical Oncology - organization & administration
Medical Oncology - standards
Medical treatment
Organizational Innovation
Patient Care Planning - organization & administration
Patient Care Planning - standards
Patient Care Team
Quality improvement
Quality Improvement - organization & administration
Quality of care
Studies
Time Factors
Time management
Waiting period
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Summary:Quality improvement strategies can be used to modify existing health care processes to reduce patient wait times. We undertook a quality improvement project to reduce the time between new patients' initial visits and the finalization of their treatment plans. Initiation of treatment of new patients at the MD Anderson Sarcoma Medical Oncology Clinic can take up to 2 weeks from their initial consultation. Treatment delays result in increased costs and anxiety for the patient, adversely affecting the quality of care provided. We performed detailed process mapping and a cause-and-effect analysis to identify and prioritize opportunities for improvement. Process improvements addressed 2 key causes of delay to develop a finalized treatment plan: (1) insufficient data for decision making at the time of new patient visit and (2) delays in obtaining diagnostic imaging. After implementing our process improvements, the median time to develop a treatment plan decreased by 89% from 70.5 to 7.6 hours. Our process changes involved minimal additional work and had the secondary outcome of resulting in time savings for the clinic team.
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ISSN:1063-8628
1550-5154
DOI:10.1097/QMH.0000000000000020