CCRMC and HC Rapid Improvement in the Health Homes: Kaizen Report Out

Greetings:

 

Over the last year we have been actively redesigning our ambulatory health system, pushing ourselves to build a stronger patient-centered, team-based system of care.  Last week a multidisciplinary team came together to work on optimizing the roles of each member of our health home teams.  The improvement team set out to better define the connections between team members in pursuit of meeting patient’s needs in a more timely manner.  The team was supported in their work by one of our patient partners, Nancy, who directly participated to help design and carry out the tests of change throughout the week. 
  

The Kaizen team focused their energy on two roles; the Care Coordinator and the Health Home Coordinator.  Our Care Coordinators assist patients with system navigation and specialty referral management, among other tasks.  While our Health Home Coordinators have a nursing clinical background that supports patients with health education and chronic disease management.  The team felt that by improving the connections and clarity between the two roles teamwork could be improved.  Over the course of the week the team defined processes for reporting laboratory results, reception and processing of any incoming patient calls, and initiation of durable medical equipment (DME) requests.  One example of the improvement work, involved utilization of online tools that staff will now use to streamline DME processing.  This new process was able to reduce initial processing cycle times by 20%.  The team will continue to monitor the changes over the next three months, with a continued emphasis on adjusting and learning from their experiments. I have included the slides from the report out above.

Two overarching themes that continue to rise to the top are centering all we do on meeting the patients expressed needs and creation of standard, predictable roles so we can work seamlessly as a team to meet our patients needs. I hope you take the time to review the visibility boards in your work areas which display our current work and progress towards our goals.

 

More very soon,

Anna

Many thanks to Miles Kotchevar and the Health Home Kaizen team for your contributions to this post. Keep an eye out for the Kaizen Team Postcard!