Root cause analysis
Arizona Department of Health Services Completed Impact Statement: A state health department used LEAN tools to improve customer service by streamlining the process for reviewing licensure applications for residential facilities, reducing the average time from 50 to 17 calendar days. |
DCHS Public Health In Progress Impact Statement: Three counties in central Oregon, Crook, Deschutes, and Jefferson, were faced with rates of only 60%–70% of 2-year-old children having received all recommended vaccinations. The counties used QI methods; elected to implement an evidence-based process, AFIX (Assessment, Feedback, Incentives,... |
TCHD Completed Impact Statement: Tazewell County Health Department (TCHD) followed a Kaizen QI process to decrease the time for completing the deposit and receipt process for fee revenue. The number of days from receipt to post decreased from 30 to 5, an 83% reduction. Additional improved outcomes resulted from the Kaizen process. |
DCHS Completed Impact Statement: Deschutes County Health Services (DCHS) in Oregon improved its process to increase clinic show rates and caseload for clients of the WIC program. This improvement optimized staff time and ensures access to care and benefits for these needed services in the community. |
Completed Impact Statement: The Boston Public Health Commission worked across departmental areas to improve the invoice payment process for their vendors. Timely payment contributes to improved relationships with these partners to collectively meet the community's health needs. |
Completed Impact Statement: Kendall County Health Department implemented successive PDSA cycles to better protect their population from West Nile Virus.
The QI activities eventually led to a nearly 200% increase in the number of mosquito tests performed. Moreover, the implementation of a GIS management system has led to... |
DCHS Completed Impact Statement: Deschutes County Health Services (DCHS) streamlined the referral process for its Nurse Family Support Services(NFSS) and Oregon MothersCare (OMC) programs. Staff satisfaction with the process has improved and program clients are now more efficiently being served. |
Washington County Completed Impact Statement: Washington County Department of Public Health and Environment led a multi-sector quality improvement project and increased the recycling rate at a county park. Expansion of this model to all county parks will further protect the environment and contribute to Minnesota's statewide goal of a 75... |
Completed Impact Statement: Through a series of PDSA cycles, a division of the Boston Public Health Commission increased staff knowledge of ongoing program updates from 69% to 86% (a 25% increase). |
Boston Public Health Commission Completed Impact Statement: By improving the perceived value of staff meetings, the Boston Public Health Commission can be more effective in its role to advance population health. |
KHI Completed Impact Statement: Kansas Health Institute (KHI) strengthened their ability to share information with clients by increasing the efficiency of its publication process and reducing staff stress associated with it. |
DOH-Seminole Completed Impact Statement: The Florida Department of Health in Seminole County (DOH-Seminole) improved the timeliness of filing Client Service Records (CSRs), positively affecting customer service and access to care. |
CGCDPH In Progress Impact Statement: Cerro Gordo County Department of Public Health (CGCDPH) worked to improve immunization rates for both types of pneumococcal vaccine recommended for seniors. Through a multifaceted approach that emphasized increased awareness of the vaccine, CGCDPH raised the rate of immunizations with the newest... |
CHA In Progress Impact Statement: By using Kaizen, Cabarrus Health Alliance (CHA) in North Carolina reduced food establishment violations by 22% and further protected residents from foodborne illness. |
DCHS Completed Impact Statement: Staff at Deschutes County Health Services (DCHS) recognized that they had so many different programs in operation that it was difficult for staff to make all the appropriate referrals for clients. They did a QI project, and their improvement hypothesis targeted three areas: knowledge, workflow, and... |
LPHI In Progress Impact Statement: The Louisiana Public Health Institute (LPHI), a nonprofit organization dependent on grant funding, engaged in a Kaizen process to decrease the amount of time it takes to prepare a grant proposal. After a 5-day Kaizen event, a new process and job aid were developed, and labor time for proposal... |
KCHD Completed Impact Statement: Developing effective public health communications via social media is very much a work in progress. One critical success factor is the ability to converse with a broader audience and to create messages that allow interaction between the messenger and the audience. During the test phase of Kane... |
FCHD Completed Impact Statement: Franklin County Health Department (FCHD), a small local health department (LHD) in Kentucky, needed to improve the completion and timeliness of restaurant inspections to meet regulatory requirements. By using the Kaizen process and involving leaders from the LHD, the QI project team identified root... |
CPH In Progress Impact Statement: Columbus Public Health (CPH), a local health department in Ohio, was bogged down by a slow, costly process to administer vaccines to children at schools. By using PDSA and a Kaizen event approach, CPH increased the timeliness and efficiency to document the immunization services and decreased its... |
Houston Health Department In Progress Impact Statement: Mobile food units (MFUs) in Houston, Texas, now experience a faster, more efficient inspection process thanks to a Kaizen event held by Houston Health Department. The average time to complete the physical inspection and administrative paperwork has decreased from 3 hours to 30 minutes. Moreover,... |
MDH Completed Impact Statement: For health department services that have a major impact on citizens, ensuring high client satisfaction is important to the public’s understanding and support for these services. Three state health departments teamed together to improve the timeliness of death data, using the Kaizen method for... |
RiverStone Health In Progress Impact Statement: Health Alert Network (HAN) messages provide vital public health information to the community’s health care providers, schools, churches, day care centers, and so on. The RiverStone Health team used a 5-day Kaizen event to improve the HAN process, create job keys, involve more staff, and decrease... |
Clackamas County Public Health Division Completed Impact Statement: Clackamas County Public Health Division has improved its onboarding processes to ensure that occupational health requirements are met within 30 days after hiring new employees and annually thereafter to ensure that risk is low and that employees and clients are safe and healthy. |
North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services In Progress Impact Statement: Recognizing the critical role of timely and accurate death data for local health departments (LHDs) to perform surveillance and make informed decisions, the North Carolina Department of Health & Human Services used quality improvement to decrease the lag in posting identifiable death data from... |
DCHS Completed Impact Statement: Deschutes County Health Services (DCHS) in Central Oregon is now able to provide more efficient preventive strategies for the county through creating and implementing an online process for reporting foodborne illness, restaurant complaints, hotel and motel complaints, pool and spa complaints, and... |
Marion County Health Department Completed Impact Statement: When a rabies susceptible animal has bitten a human, it is imperative that health departments responsible for the investigation and quarantine of these animals respond a timely manner. A local health department in Oregon used a PDSA approach to reduce the time to process rabies bites reports by 29... |
Florida Department of Health in Seminole County Completed Impact Statement: Client complaints and staff dissatisfaction with prenatal clinic wait times led the Seminole County DOH to use QI to decrease their client visit times. Focusing on modifying the prenatal scheduling matrix, eliminating duplicate charts, and decreasing the physical distance traveled between check-... |
TCHD Completed Impact Statement: Reducing adolescent tobacco use is a priority for Tooele County Health Department (TCHD) in Utah. Staff recognized the need to improve tobacco compliance check pass rates and identified that clerks who possess a valid permit were less likely to sell tobacco products to minors. TCHD used quality... |
NCHD 5-2 Completed Impact Statement: This health department was able to achieve a 51% improvement in HIV testing rates, which can result in identifying more people with HIV and better, more immediate treatment. In order to reduce redundancy, the QI project team eliminated one of the demographic forms that had been required, saving... |
Washington County Department of Public Health and Environment Completed Impact Statement: Using quality improvement to raise community awareness of the importance of annual private well water testing increased the number of tests performed, assuring a safe water supply for county residents all done without increasing processing costs! |
FCHD Completed Impact Statement: Early intervention has been shown to positively impact outcomes across developmental domains. The Fond du Lac County Health Department increased the number of children being screened for developmental delays from 5 to 9 per month, allowing more children to be appropriately connected with services... |
JCDHE Completed Impact Statement: Johnson County Department of Health and Environment used a kaizen event to improve the supply ordering process cycle time and increased the order placement and delivery accuracy for all programs in the department. The results included decrease in cycle time – total ordering process time per order... |
CCPHD Completed Impact Statement: Clackamas County, Oregon conducted a comprehensive Kaizen project to design and implement a customer feedback system for the entire public health division. The process and tools used for the project are well described and easy to adapt by other health departments. While Clackamas has not yet... |
CDPH Completed Impact Statement: Untreated chlamydia (CT) and gonorrhea (GC) can lead to serious health problems in men and women. In order to effectively track and treat these two sexually transmitted infections, CDC guidelines require that low-priority CT and GC reports be processed by health departments within 30 days of... |
El Dorado County Health and Human Services Agency Completed Impact Statement: El Dorado County Health and Human Services Agency used a Kaizen event to improve customer satisfaction and reduce labor time in the County “request for information” process. The results of the project mean better and faster information to the incoming caller, so they can make more informed... |
DeKalb County Board of Health Completed Impact Statement: The DeKalb County Board of Health used a kaizen event to decrease the labor time and increase the accuracy of filing death certificate registrations. Improving the process resulted in labor savings, better cash flow and improved performance for customers in providing accurate and timely filing. The... |
DOH-Seminole Completed Impact Statement: DOH-Seminole County realized savings of $7764 for goods and services from price negotiations during the first quarter following a Kaizen event – almost double the goal set by the QI team. Other improvements in the requisition process included a 38% decrease in process time, in addition to... |
WCPH Completed Impact Statement: Washington County (OR) conducted a Kaizen Event to improve the volume of childcare facilities that used the LHD for their state required inspections. The agency implemented several new policies and protocols to standardize the entire inspection process. As a result, they anticipate a reduction in... |
TCHD Completed Impact Statement: Kaizen events lend themselves to rapid improvements in routine health department processes. Tazewell County Health Department utilized Kaizen tools to full advantage--reducing administrative time related to food establishment inspections dramatically, exceeding the project aim. In the first month... |
Deschutes County Health Services Completed Impact Statement: WIC coupons for use at famer’s markets are a precious resource for improving nutrition and reducing food hunger in low-income families, as well as supporting local farmers. Deschutes County Health Department noted a decreasing trend of redemption, which meant a literal wasting of coupons that other... |
SLCHD Completed Impact Statement: This initiative describes how quality leaders at the Salt Lake County Health Department challenged the status quo to transform organizational quality culture. Members of the SLCHD Quality Council identified a need to increase the health department's emphasis on quality after a review and... |
MDH Completed Impact Statement: Effective tobacco control and prevention outreach is vital to decreasing tobacco use, secondhand smoke exposure, and tobacco-related disease rates. In addition, the loss of significant resources and funding for tobacco control and prevention have made it all the more important to have efficient... |
ADHS Completed Impact Statement: Home visiting programs are an important intervention to improve the health of women and children, but they are generally done in programmatic silos. A state health department used QI to improve the process and systematically address both chronic disease and environmental health risk factors... |
Oregon Health Authority, Public Health Division, Maternal and Child Health Section Completed Impact Statement: Staff from Oregon MothersCare conducted a QI project to improve their processes for prenatal care, which led to decreased errors in tracking and faster flow through the system so that pregnant women received services in a more timely manner. Access to prenatal care was also improved. |
UDOH Completed Impact Statement: This state health department quality improvement (QI) effort sought to improve customer satisfaction and increase use of the Utah state laboratory. The intervention tested was the development of a website for use by local health department (LHD) staff, who achieved both of the QI project goals. In... |
MCDPH Completed Impact Statement: A large county health department used effective data gathering, analysis, and interpretation with PDSA to enable increased WIC caseloads that in turn decreased the number of negative health outcomes among low-income mothers and their families who had not been receiving WIC benefits. |
Mississippi State Department of Health Completed Impact Statement: The Prentiss County Health Department and Mississippi State Department of Health partnered on a project to reduce wait time in their WIC clinics, reassign staff as needed on higher traffic days, and provide customer service training to frontline staff to assure greater satisfaction and... |
KCHD Completed Impact Statement: Using QI Tools and PDSA leads to significant improvement in the standardization of Final Inspection Reports. |
WCHD Completed Impact Statement: Tuberculosis is difficult to eradicate, it can have devastating health impacts, and one active TB case can result in budget-breaking expenses for small-to-medium local health jurisdictions. A local health department in Washington state implemented a quality planning and quality improvement project... |
DOH-Seminole Completed Impact Statement: The Specialty Care clinic at the Florida Department of Health in Seminole County sought to notify clients more quickly of the results from their tests at the sexually transmitted disease clinic. A QI project led to implementation of a confidential no-reply text messaging system which resulted in... |