This short animated video explains how to find and use our powerful how-to guides
Does your team want to improve service? Or clinical quality? If you don't know where to start, check out the team-tested practices on the LMP website. This short video shows you how.
Having trouble using the search function? Check out this short video to help you search like a pro!
Need to find a checklist, template or puzzle? Don't know where to start? Check out this short video to find the tools you need on the LMP website with just a few clicks.
Format:
PDF
Size:
8.5" x 11"
Intended audience:
Frontline managers
Best used:
Get a sense of how members experience your department by responding to these sample questions as though you were a KP member or patient rating your team's performance.
Registration reps at two medical offices in the Northwest were struggling to get their work done.
Their job aids were inadequate. And these can prove critical in busy clinics, by providing help with tasks like adding a walk-in patient to the schedule, incorporating additional insurance information or processing payments.
But disorganization, improper documentation and an unclear process meant staff members frequently had to stop and interrupt a co-worker (slowing his or her work down) to find out how to do such tasks—all while the member waited.
So staff members started a “plan, do, study, act” improvement process.
As a first step, they held a meeting and registration representatives brought all their job aids from their desks, often just stacks of paper in no particular order. In the meeting, they tried to find specific documents and were timed.
The average time it took to locate a document was 26 seconds, and worse, the reference document often couldn’t be found.
The team decided to organize their job aid books in a consistent manner. No matter where a registration representative was sitting, every book was the same. Staff also created instruction sheets on some processes that complemented the job aids.
Included in the new policy and procedure binders were colored job aids with cover sheets in alphabetical order, and also a step-by-step instruction sheet.
“We’ve heard nothing but good feedback from doing this improvement,” supervisor Colleen Moore says. “Staff have more confidence because they are figuring out the answers to their questions instead of asking.”
After implementing the changes, the team tested the process again and located the correct reference document each time in an average time of three seconds.
Format:
PDF
Size:
8.5" x 11"
Intended Audience:
Frontline managers, UBT sponsors and UBT co-leads
Best Used:
This tip sheet guides you through the important steps in performing service recovery, using the "A-HEART" mnemonic, when a member/patient expresses a problem or concern.
The Clinical Home Health Care team in San Diego needed to see discharged patients within 24 hours.
But they were hitting less than 50 percent success, and given their patients included those in hospice and palliative care, this was a problem.
At issue was a patient discharge list that might have 50 or more names. An intake nurse would dictate patient information to a department clerk, who would complete the forms. Only then would a home health visit get triggered.
This wasted time.
Modeled after a successful practice at Riverside Medical Center, the team did two things. First, they eliminated the clerk from the workflow and had the nurses process the patient information directly.
And second, they trimmed the list of names being referred to Home Health Care to only those patients who were getting discharged within the next 48 hours.
“We plan our day based on that list,” says Daniele Wilson, director of patient care services for home care. “But we cannot plan if that list is not updated. We needed to focus on the work that needed to be done more immediately.”
Home Health Care intake nurses also communicated with the discharge planners to get up-to-the-hour information on which patients will be released that day and need to be seen by a Home Health Care provider within the following 24 hours.
That group was reduced to about five daily patients, and in two months the number of referrals seen within 24 hours grew from 44 to 77 percent.
“It’s much easier to tackle when a list has a handful of names,” Wilson says. “When it was 50-some it was difficult to even know where to begin. It felt futile.”
The team included daily morning huddles to review the number of newly referred patients and their needs, as well as ongoing patient needs. They also improved communication with the referring departments, such as orthopedics and primary care.
“We reached out to different heads of departments to figure out how they operated,” Wilson says. “By understanding how they operated, it helped us know how we can interact with them.”
Lisa Tuckwell, RN, public health nurse and UNAC/UCHP member, learned to speak doc.
“We figured out the buzz words that got a doctor to act.”
