CCRMC Safety System Kaizen 3

I wanted to share a quick update that went out via CCRMC postcard from the Kaizen team.

Contra Costa Regional Medical Center Kaizen Safety Stream June 17-20, 2014

This was the third of five scheduled events dedicated to addressing our safety system as it relates to the Root Cause Analysis process. When a serious safety event occurs at the medical center or health centers, our organization uses a standard process called a "Root Cause Analysis" (RCA) to understand the system failures. Those failures are addressed by interviewing the staff involved and detailing a timeline of events. At the completion of the Root cause Analysis convening, the participants devise actions items to complete to prevent similar events from occurring in the future.

Here are the slides from the report out:


The two previous Rapid Improvement Events (RIE) focused on: 1) the immediate response to a serious safety event, and 2) preparation for the RCA meeting. This third event focused on the RCA meeting. The goal was to achieve a more consistent approach to the meeting structure and to standardize the roles of those facilitating the meeting. These goals were to be accomplished through standard work creation and development of action plan criteria.

In three days, the team identified problems, opportunities for improvement and simulated the changed process:
RCA Meeting Agenda: Adjusted agenda to ensure sufficient time is allotted to event analysis and action plans
Action Plan Tracking and Criteria: To track action item completion a spreadsheet was revised to better capture the details of progress and to identify the lead person responsible for each item. A shared electronic version will be investigated in the next RIE. A guide was also created to facilitate action plan creation.Roles Clarified: Standard work was developed for the RCA roles of facilitator, scribe, and timekeeper
RCA Meeting Follow-up Plan: To help expedite action item completion the team created a work flow for follow-up meetings and communication for a small sub-team of Department Heads, Nurse Program Managers, Quality Managers, and the Patient Safety Officer

Interviews with staff and leaders provided great insight into the current state and provided excellent ideas to further investigate. There will need to be a heavy emphasis on teaching the standard work to ensure the next RIE can pick up easily from where the last team left off.

The next RIE is scheduled for August 26-29, 2014 and will be dedicated to “Implementation, Closure and Communication of Lessons Learned. All standard work is located on “Standard Work Library” under Hospital & Health Centers.

More very soon,
Anna