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Learning Objective 1: describe how the Endoscopy stakeholders implemented plans to improve case volumes, patient wait times, scheduling, and patient satisfaction.
Learning Objective 2: discuss how the members of the Endoscopy team developed and implemented improvement plans for opperational efficiency on the unit.
In March of 2008 an Endoscopy Efficiency Project was introduced to the nurse leaders, physicians, nursing staff, and various stakeholders. Based upon the available data, it was concluded that there was room for improvements. The goals for the project were to look at current Endoscopy operational performance and implement improvement plans.
Room changeover activity consisted of revisiting earlier measurements and redefining roles of staff members. Earlier measurements showed us that we were taking 15-20 minutes between cases in order to get the procedure room ready for the next patient. The team set 10 minutes as our goal. Currently, our average room changeover is less than 10 minutes.
Physician scheduling trends were looked at for opportunities for improvement. We were expecting 13 new physicians to arrive between July and December 2008 and needed to accommodate physicians from the departments of Medicine and Surgery. The first half of this year our productivity ranged between 83 and 90% and room utilization was 30%. By staffing an appropriate number of rooms for the projected workload room utilization increased from 30% to 45% and our productivity is now at a YTD average of 100%.
Patient satisfaction was another measure we needed to look at. We initiated a number of improvements which we hope to start seeing results in our patient satisfaction scores. These improvements consisted of ease of scheduling an appointment, decrease in the number of pages in the admission packet, and keeping the patients in the same room for admission, recovery, and discharge.