Background: Cancer diagnosis is a devastating and painful process for patients and their families, resulting in significant stress and uncertainty. Chemotherapy treatments may provide a cure, control or palliate symptoms caused by cancer. However, delivery of chemotherapy in outpatient clinics is challenging and timeconsuming. Long wait is a common patient complaint, affects work-flow and chair time usage, increases costs, and compromises safety. We sought to review our system and implement changes that may result in decrease wait time.
Methods: Utilizing the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) model, the plan-do-study-act (PDSA) method to test and implement changes, we established a preintervention Ishikawa diagram over a 4 weeks period to study the process and determine cause of delay. Changes were implemented in a stepwise fashion, assess for improvement and revised our process over another 4 week period. We collect and analyze data for a total of 2 months. The objective of the study was to decrease wait-time to initiate chemotherapy treatment from the end of clinic visit to start of chemotherapy infusion by 20-30 minutes for 50% of patients in the oncology clinic over a three-month period.
Results: Pre-intervention data was collected on 245 patients. 55% (n=136) of these patients waited an average of 90 minutes and 45% (n=110) waited an average of 42 minutes from check-in to infusion clinic to start of chemotherapy. Identified barriers causing delayed chemotherapy administration included no consent, no prior authorization, unwritten/unsigned orders, pharmacy release delay, incomplete required labs, delay drug delivery from pharmacy, and difficulty with IV access. After the first cycle of PDSA, post-intervention data reveal a small improvement. 52% (n=199) patients waited an average of 87 minutes and 48% (n=183) average wait was 41 minutes.
Conclusions: By utilizing the PDSA cycle to test the modification of the revised workflow system and eliminate barriers to release of chemotherapy we could potentially reduce wait times for patient receiving chemotherapy at the Minneapolis VA. Updated data will be presented at the AVAHO Annual Meeting.
