1. Durable Medical Equipment Process Improvement for Standing Orders
Gustavo Ferreira, BSN
BACKGROUND
PROJECT APPROACH
DISCUSSION
This project proposal was part of the Lean Six Sigma Project DME Process Improvement by the Chief Support Executive from the Southern California Correctional Facility. The project identified deficiencies and failures in the process of issuance of DME for the inmate-patients. The current process for DME procurement, distribution, replacement, tracking, and updates to various technological platforms was disjointed, resulting in non-compliance in issuing DME. The outdated technology, policies and lack of qualified human resources resulted in communication breakdown in the unsustainable system that ultimately compromises patient safety and quality of care.
The California Correctional Health Care Services (CCHCS) shall provide Durable Medical Equipment (DME) and medical supplies to the adult inmate-patients at the Correctional Facility located in Southern California as medically necessary to ensure the patients have equal access to prison services, programs, or activities. Without a streamlined approach for timely DME issuance, tracking and ensuring appropriate documentation, this process is prone to errors, wasted resources, unnecessary staff re-work, delays in treatment and negative patient health outcomes.
PURPOSE
METRIC CATEGORIES COMPARED
NEXT STEPS & OPPORTUNTIES
The FMEA identified activities as high severity for potential failure such as headquarters processes order with potential failure because of order completion including price quote verification incorrect; primary care physician (PCP) orders DME wrong size or item not available within compliance; Central Supply orders DME missing information; or LVN fills out 115 DME specifications with wrong catalog number. The potential failures effects included long delay, possible no issuance, and rework (Tucker, 2018).
The project proposal is the start of the next steps for the California Correctional facility. Based on this project proposal, the project will also build, test and analyze the workflow results to present and suggest a new improved solution to dispense DME for the inmate-patients with physician standing order for a DME that could be implemented at Southern California Correctional Facility and eventually in all the facilities of California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) statewide.
The objective of this project was:
This project aimed to increase the quality of patient care by improving the workflow for delivery of DME issued by physician standing order.
The goals of this project include:
To identify the deficiency of the current workflow for the dispense of DME to inmate-patients with physician standing order.
To create a new workflow for dispensing DME to inmate-patients with a physician standing order.
To suggest an improved solution for dispensing DME to inmate-patients with physician standing order.