The Need for Patience When Making Operational Changes to Address Quality.

Abstract

There is increasing recognition in the value of systematically addressing operational issues to improve quality. However, the time necessary for these initiatives has not been well described. Here we report the time necessary to implement meaningful operational changes based on our institutional incident reporting system. Our department has a robust quality improvement/assurance program where all team members are encouraged to report operational challenges through our "Good Catch Program". A multidisciplinary committee composed of MDs, physicists, dosimetrists, RTTs, RNs, administrators, and industrial engineers meets weekly to review new Good Catches and prior unresolved Good Catches. Each Good Catch was assigned a "Champion" to oversee responses and lead subsequent initiatives. The software tracked when a Good Catch is submitted, each time a note is added (reflecting an individual's comment or summary of group discussion), and when it is "closed". Good Catch closure occurred upon implementation of a change in workflow, development of a new policy, or decision to take no action. In cases where a change in workflow or policy was the consensus decision of the committee, the Good Catch was kept open and re-reviewed at subsequent weekly meetings until a new workflow was in place and relevant teams were onboarded. From Jan 2015 - Dec 2022, 2748 Good Catches were reported (see Table). Most Good Catches were discussed at only one weekly multidisciplinary committee meeting and closed within 7 days of reporting (69%). For the 854 Good Catches that took >1 week to close, the median time to closure was 16 days (range 7-588 days). In general, the number of notes was higher for Good Catches that took longer to close; however, some Good Catches that closed rapidly had more than 10 notes in a short period of time and other Good Catches with lengthy time to closure had minimal resulting documentation (see Table). Most Good Catches were assigned a Champion who was an MD, Physicist, or RTT, and there was no significant difference in Champion assignments for those good catches that closed quickly (< 8 days) and those that had a longer duration to closure. The majority of operational Good Catches are resolved quickly; speaking to the value of regular weekly multidisciplinary meetings. However, many operational issues require multiple discussion over many weeks and emphasizes that such efforts are challenging and require patience, dedication, and commitment to implement changes in workflow.