Social workers first-time treatment assessment.

Abstract

164 Background: Supporting emotional, psychological, financial and spiritual well-being of patients has been shown to have a positive impact on quality of life and patient experience. Social workers in our outpatient cancer center are responsible for completing new patient assessments at the start of chemotherapy treatment to provide early access to psychosocial support services. Assessments are to be completed within three weeks of the patient’s first chemotherapy treatment. Connecting with patients early in the care experience allows social workers to proactively assist with education, support and link patients to vital resources. Methods: Completed assessments were tracked and from October through December 2017. The social workers leveraged the use of data analytics and a team based approach to increase the number of new patient assessments completed within the first 3 weeks of chemotherapy. Weekly 30-minute huddles were held using problem solving methods, including brain storming, cause and effect diagrams, force ranking, and polling. Results: A team identified 39 potential causes to why 65.14% of patients were not receiving assessments within the first 3 weeks of chemotherapy treatment. Potential causes were grouped and themed. Work prioritization, inconsistent methods of identifying patients receiving chemotherapy for the first time, and lack of visual management to monitor progress of this metric were identified as key objectives for improvement. Countermeasures were developed and implemented; a dashboard was created to analyze the first time treatment assessment completion percentages by disease group and standardizing the process of notifying social workers of patients in need of an assessment. Social worker assessment completion rates improved from 34.78% (December 2017) to 75.35% (April 2018). Conclusions: This project demonstrates the value of utilizing problem solving, visual management, and data analytics for continuous quality improvement projects related to clinical care and processes. Cross-disciplinary collaboration should be explored with the use of visual tools and other resources to facilitate communication that is understood by all disciplines.