CLINICAL EFFECTIVENESS
AMBULATORY AND INPATIENT PROCESS IMPROVEMENT PROJECTS
Ambulatory FY 2017
• Flu Clinic: As part of UAB Medicine’ s mission to improve the health and well-being of the community and its workforce, an interdisciplinary team worked to create a dedicated and centralized space to increase access for flu vaccine administration, reducing the barrier of prevention and increasing the compliance rate.
• CODE Sepsis in the ambulatory setting: Once patient is identified as septic, clinic provides a handoff communication report to receiving unit. The patient is immediately transported to ED or unit for treatment by nurse stat team.
• Liver transplant med rec process: Pharmacist performs med rec during intake and before check out. Pharmacist has a dedicated office to ensure that patients see pharmacist before leaving the clinic.
• Suicide screening: A new process that utilizes the inpatient psychiatric evaluation specialist for consultation when a patient refuses to be evaluated in ED for suicidal ideation.
• Electronic order / referral for Anticoagulation Clinic: An electronic order / referral was created for anticoagulation clinic to ensure that request was received and acted upon. This replaced the old process of faxing a paper form that could result in missing request form.
• Electronic consent form: piloted in Dermatology and Plastic Surgery
• Patient tracer workshop: This workshop serves to educate staff on the continuous readiness audit tool that aides in monitoring compliance with regulatory requirements and policies. This class teaches staff what to observe in their clinics to ensure that patients receive the highest quality care and is an opportunity to identify issues.
• Universal protocol workshop: The universal protocol workshop helped educate staff to improve patient safety and increase compliance. The workshop included leadership, staff, physicians, and residents. It provided education and a simulation lab to test the attendees’ knowledge and compliance with the process.
• Genetics and HLA lab results: IMPACT message will alert ordering provider when results are available.
• 6-minute walk test: There was not a standardized process for completing 6-minute walk test; each area had a different process. An interprofessional team was formed that includes representatives from each inpatient and outpatient Respiratory Therapy. The team reviewed each area’ s process and national guidelines to create one standardized process for UAB.
• Ambulatory Quality Performance Scorecard( Tableau): The AQPS was a manually created scorecard. In 2017, the Ambulatory Quality and Patient Safety Department worked with the PowerInsight team to automate the scorecard.
• Ambulatory Quality Performance Scorecard Action Plan( REDCap): The AQPS action plan was a paper form on which clinic managers / leadership had to manually insert the metrics, target, and compliance. This information is now automatically input into the action plan.
• Physician Quality Reporting Systems( PQRS) Scorecard: Displays PQRS metrics down to provider level.
• Regulatory conference: A conference to bring awareness to common environment of care findings, clinical documentation concerns, and general survey etiquette.
• Fall Prevention Initiatives: – Creation of fall education materials that are sent to all new patients and through the patient portal – Ambulatory falls entered into NDNQI database – Visit with falls consultant to assess facilities – Rest stations to be added throughout The Kirklin Clinic of
UAB Hospital – Increased access to telephones that provide a direct line to
Guest Services – Increased education and ergonomic training for patient escorts to facilitate strategies for approaching patients who need assistance
• Quality and Performance Improvement Project Database: Database for ambulatory and inpatient to display their quality and performance improvement project. The database promotes synergy and accountability, reduces redundancy, and eliminates silos.
24 UAB Quality and Safety Annual Report