Quality Improvement: Implementing Nurse Standard Work in Emergency Department Fast-Track Area to Reduce Patient Length of Stay.

Introduction: The average length of stay of a fast-track area of a large urban hospital was excessively long, which affected the patient experience and the rate at which patients left without being seen. One approach to reducing average length of stay is to create nurse standard work. Nurse standard work was a defined set of process and procedures that reduce variability within a nurse's workflow.

Simulating the effects of operating room staff movement and door opening policies on microbial load.

Objective: To identify factors that increase the microbial load in the operating room (OR) and recommend solutions to minimize the effect of these factors.

Design: Observation and sampling study.

Setting: Academic health center, public hospitals.

Assessing operating room turnover time via the use of mobile application.

Background: Improving operating room (OR) utilization is crucial to hospitals. This study examines the effectiveness of a mobile application co-developed with hospital staff to track OR turnover time (TOT).

Methods: An Android-based app, named ORTimer, was used by staff in two OR units (GI-Lab and D-Core) of Greenville Memorial Hospital (GMH) in South Carolina.

Rethinking behavioral health processes by using design for six sigma.

Clinical evidence-based practices are strongly encouraged and commonly utilized in the behavioral health community. However, evidence-based practices that are related to quality improvement processes, such as Design for Six Sigma, are often not used in behavioral health care. This column describes the unique partnership formed between a behavioral health care provider in the greater Pittsburgh area, a nonprofit oversight and monitoring agency for behavioral health services, and academic researchers.

Perioperative workflow: barriers to efficiency, risks, and satisfaction.

An in-depth, interdisciplinary case study was conducted to map and describe the information, material, and functional processes common to high-volume surgical specialty procedures at a southeastern US hospital. Researchers identified process defects and their effects using both observation and staff member interviews. Outdated information and structural barriers to communications were responsible for many procedural delays, procedural interruptions, and staff member work-arounds.