Grant Lynde, MD, MBA, Chief of Practice and Process Improvement in the Department of Anesthesiology at Emory University, discusses how to create quality improvement initiatives that appeal to physicians, keep physicians engaged in meaningful practice improvement, and sustain such initiatives. The key to engaging physicians is designing initiatives that can demonstrate meaningful change and improvement in patient outcomes, he said.
TRANSCRIPT: Organizations can help their physicians select projects by asking them what are the things that are most important to them, what are some of their pain points, and how they think they can most improve their care for their own patients. The most important aspect in designing a quality improvement project that will keep your physician engaged is being able to demonstrate meaningful change and meaningful improvement in patient outcomes. Sustaining a Quality Improvement project is one of the biggest challenges an organization is going to face. Some of the items that an organization needs to focus on is, first, providing automatic feedback to the physician-provider so they understand what impact they’re having on their patient care. Organizations also need to celebrate successes as they go along the way. And, finally, organizations need to focus on the teams and celebrate the team and help the team grow and mature over time. At Emory University, we engaged in a Quality Improvement project to reduce perioperative wound infections. Involved in this project were surgeons, anesthesiologists, infectious disease specialists, nurses, and pharmacists. And together, we developed processes to provide the right drug, the right dose, the right timing of our antibiotics, and we’ve successfully reduced the number of wound infections by about 50 percent in patients undergoing bowel, bladder, and hysterectomies.
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