Insights Tagged as Healthcare

Dermatology Group Boosts Coding Accuracy from 65.4% to 91.7%

In a matter of months, an NC dermatology group boosted insurance coding accuracy saving $65,000.
http://www.msochealth.com/lean-six-sigma-dermatology-practice/

While most of the healthcare quality focus is on hospitals, there’s a huge opportunity to make doctor’s offices more effective and efficient. In this case, better coding results in faster payment of insurance claims. Offices can use Lean to reduce patient wait times and increase volume resulting in more revenue and better patient care.

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Posted by Jay Arthur in Lean, Service, Six Sigma.

Magnet Improvement Posters

Last week, we exhibited at the Magnet conference for nursing quality. Every healthcare quality conference has posters about improvement projects: Magnet, NAHQ, and IHI. What struck me about these posters was the shortage of quality tools like control charts, pareto charts and fishbone diagrams. Those posters using charts often used the incorrect type of chart for the data.

Here’s an example. This chart has so many lines on it, how can you tell what story they are trying to tell?

Injury Falls

Here’s an example using a bar chart (instead of a line graph) and the dates are in reverse order:

Bar Chart

Here’s another bar chart with the dates in the correct order, but again, time series charts like this one should be shown as a line, run or control chart.

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Posted by Jay Arthur in Six Sigma.

Surgical Hospital Shut Down

The Denver Post reported that the Colorado Orthopaedic and Surgical Hospital was shut down this week after a patient’s death. What went wrong?

Patient was given a a pain killer in too high a dose.
Patient was left alone for 15 minutes after receiving the drug.
Staff was unfamiliar with the crash cart.
The rapid reponse team had trouble reaching the patient’s room.

The nurse involved resigned.
What did the hospital pledge to do? Increase training on emergency response.

All too often, managers think that better training will lead to better results. Unfortunately, employees come and go. Training degrades over time (you lose 90% of what you learn if you don’t use it in 72 hours after training.)

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Posted by Jay Arthur in Service, Six Sigma.