Applying a Quality Improvement Approach to Improve Clinic Efficiency
Published:
We have improved things for patients and for the staff, which as a dual accomplishment gives me great satisfaction.Carolena Cogdill, CEO, Haven Health
When patients expressed frustration about how long they had to wait to be seen at their appointments, the team at Haven Health Clinic in Amarillo, Texas used a quality improvement (QI) approach to improve clinic efficiency.
This 5-minute video outlines how the Haven Health team decided what it wanted to work on and then used Plan-Do-Study-Act cycles of QI to decrease paperwork time and improve patient experience. Staff followed the steps Plan (to try out a new approach to reduce paperwork) and Do (provide patients with less paperwork to fill out). After several months of regular review of the data (Study), the team agreed on other changes they could make to reduce patient paperwork from five pages to one (Act). “As a provider, you can usually tell if something’s not working and have to be willing to give it [QI] a try,” says nurse practitioner Whitney Dowd. “If patients are seen and satisfied…Sometimes the best advertisement is word of mouth.”
Explore the QI eLearning series, which provides an introduction to QI and how QI relates to the QFP recommendation that family planning entities "conduct quality improvement.