What are the essentials of rapid quality upgrades?
Success in accelerating change cycles usually hinges on someone's investment of considerable time in setting the stage. If you make such shifts, your job will start to resemble that of a director for a stage play. What the audience experiences as a seamless production unfolding before their eyes is actually the result of the director's painstaking coordination of lighting, props, and cues.
To get you off to a good start, we've collected insights from three QI pros: Tim Hallock, MS, CQI facilitator at the Madison, WI-based St. Mary's Hospital and Medical Center; Rosemary Keeley, director, Improvement Services for VHA Central Atlanta in Charlotte, NC; and Eugene Nelson, DSc, MPH, director of Quality Education, Measurement and Research, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, NH.
Here are their tips for preparing your teams for rapid change:
Orientate QI teams with a step-by-step walk-through of the change process you intend to use. Support their progress by providing every bit of background you anticipate they will need. Respond with lightning speed to all requests for additional data. When a task is complete, end your teams well by extending meaningful appreciation for their efforts and leaving the door open for continued QI suggestions.
Work in concentrated blocks of time, half- to full-day sessions compressed into four to eight weeks.
Choose a team leader trained and experienced in accelerated change processes like those Institute from the Boston-based for Healthcare Improvement or the Juran Institute in Wilton, CT.
Reserve the resource-intensive accelerated change processes for issues your top executives can spot on their radar screens because you'll need their support.
Benchmark within and outside the health care industry. People need ideas to make creative changes. Instead of site visits to benchmark partners, try phone conferences where the whole team participates. Write a script and distribute it to the team beforehand so each conference touches on vital issues.
Implement change in small chunks. Test as you go. Shoot for preliminary tests within 48 hour, well before the finished change design is in place.
String your small changes together like a strand of pearls.
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