Case Study

P-D-C-A Model of process improvement

I was sitting in my office when I received a call from the hospital administrator. He said his office had received complaints from the various patients that they had waited for too long before being served at the outpatient collection section. As the director in this section, I am expected to oversee and facilitate the pursuit of excellent performance in accordance with the hospital’s vision. Therefore, I decided to use PDCA process improvement model in exploring the prevailing problem, reviewing and accelerating performance improvement.

First, I formulated a plan. In this plan, I intended to assess why the patients waited for long before being served. To match our service time to the trajectory of the hospital’s goal, I compared the minimum number of patients we were expected to attend to in one hour and the actual number that this section was able to serve. It was necessary to introduce the process improvement model.

As the director, I needed to lead my team in doing a review of our speed of service delivery. I used questionnaires to collect data from different patients. A questionnaire was issued in the pharmacy and the patients would fill as they waited to collect their medicine. Data collected revealed specific areas were the improvement was necessary. In a meeting with staff members, we discussed the cause of delays in the previously identified areas. I allowed them to suggest the possible solutions and set a goal. Among the problems identified were; the inadequate number of staff members, few observation rooms and few doctor rooms.

Immediately I requested the hospital administrator for replacement of doctors, nurses, lab technicians and receptionists whose services were previously terminated by the hospital or out of their self will. Then we partitioned the observation room in two and the doctors’ room into three rooms. This implementation was achieved in phases. We check on the number of patients we are now able to serve in every month and the numbers have been increasing. Today we have completely embedded PDCA to maintain the improved care and services in the outpatient section.