Slide 35

Process Metrics

• Average time to notify DA about new admission.
• Average time from admission to first patient visit by DA (initiation of care plan) only for patients who meet all criteria.
• Percent of patients' PCPs notified within 24 hours discharge.
• Percent of follow-up phone calls made within 48 hours.
• Percent of follow-up calls requiring second call by pharmacist (if non-pharmacist makes first call).
• Percent of patients completing post-discharge survey (30 days after discharge).

Notes:

As your team moves out of the Define or Plan phase of your PI project, there is now a solid understanding of what the project is and what the project is not in regards to scope. The next step is to determine what types of measurements exist within the high-level process map that your team created. We traditionally collect outcome metrics within health care organizations but rarely collect process metrics that are critical for the detection of defects and root cause variables. Step one of the Measure phase will be to identify the metrics that will document process and outcome measurements, and step two of the Measure phase will be to create the data collection plan that will ensure data accuracy. For instance, the discharge time of the patient may be documented as 0930. Does this mean that the patient walked out of his hospital room at 0930, checked out at the front nursing station at 0930, or got into his car to ride home at 0930?

The team will agree on how these metrics will be collected, who will collect them, and how variations in the prescribed process will be documented.