Increasing Quality Improvement Project Submissions

At OCHD, the QI team, along with other QI project teams that work on specific QI projects, works on administrative QI projects to maintain team member engagement and keep meetings interesting. The QI team also provides technical assistance to QI project teams and works through tools with the groups to initiate the projects. The QI initiative began with brainstorming. The QI team brainstormed all of the possible reasons that the numbers of QI project submissions were low. The ideas were then grouped by affinity or theme. The team then used the nominal group technique (NGT) to vote on the problem they wanted to focus on and develop solutions for. The team chose to address two areas: fear of more work and forgetting the submission process. To address the fear of more work barrier, the team overhauled the project proposal card that staff complete—they simplified it and included more relevant information on it. Potential outcomes and other project details became checkboxes instead of boxes to write an open-ended response. The team also included a space on the card for "who should be on this project team," so staff would not feel as though they would have to be on the team if they thought of the idea. The new project proposal card was presented at an all-staff meeting for final input from staff. The health department director reiterated that QI project assignment includes time and workload consideration, so staff should not fear that simply by submitting an idea, they would have to be on the team. To address the theory that staff simply forget to formally write up a project proposal, the QI team developed a promotional month for QI submissions. A new banner was put up, and the initiative was titled "Have No Fear, QI is Here." Staff members put their ideas on the board and entered their names to receive incentives such as small gifts, chocolate, and so on. Staff across all levels of the department were encouraged to participate. The Plan, Do, Study, Act cycle was used as part of this project. Details can be seen in the RCI Quick Strike Project Form attached to this submission. Several steps were implemented; studied; and adopted, adapted, or abandoned.

OCHD continues to monitor the number of staff submissions monthly at the beginning of each QI team meeting. OCHD anticipates having to develop some type of promotional event at least every other year to re-energize staff.