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Small changes can have a big impact at your ASC

Ambulatory Safety Monitor, July 14, 2004

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Healthcare facilities always look for ways to improve practices, but adopting the changes can often be difficult.

Sometimes medical staff fail to believe the changes can make a difference or don't think they have the time to learn a new technique.

That was the problem at CareSouth Carolina, a group of ambulatory centers in South Carolina. New programs used to come about after a committee spent months researching an idea.

Follow-up studies often would reveal that the initiative did not have a high compliance rate.

Staff decided to take a new approach called "Plan, Do, Study, Act," says Ann Lewis, executive director of the CareSouth facilities. Now, anyone who comes up with an idea for improvement tests it out on a small group of patients.

For example, if employees want to try a new method for assessing asthma risks, they would test it on a group of no more than five patients. If it worked well with the first set of patients, the employee shares the results with other staff, who then try the new method with their own patients.

"We test something on a few patients before we make a systemwide change," says Lewis. "Staff see the results of several small tests, and they buy into it. They are involved in the testing and they see immediate results.

"Within a year, everyone in the facility uses the new method."

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