Gayle Cazalet and Josiane Charbonneau

1. Admission process Improvement at SJCCC Gayle Cazalet and Josiane Charbonneau St Joseph’s Continuing Care Center Partners in Achieving Change Excellence. 282 Lourdes Street, Sudbury, ON P3B 2V6 705-222-8463 > neha.singh@yourpace.ca

2. Admission process at SJCCC Executive Summary Gayle, Occupational Therapist / Patient Flow Coordinator, and Josiane, RPN/RAI coordinator, identified an area of improvement in one of the processes at St Joseph’s Continuity Care Center. Staff used process improvement tools such as a Root Cause Analysis and Process Map in order to identify areas of waste. Once areas of waste were identified, a set of goals were outlined which lead to the elimination of waste in the process and a reduction in the time taken to carry out the process. coming in. There is also less time to correct medication errors once they have been received and obtain all the proper medications on time. Furthermore, there is wasted time for the Pharmacy as they are calling the facility to inquire if the medication list has been received. Problem Statement: Josiane and Gayle identified that there was a delay between the identification of bed vacancy and the bed fulfilment notice at SJCCC worked to outline a problem statement in order to improve the process. The problem was defined as: Delays between the identification of a bed vacancy and the bed fulfillment notice; resulting in minimal preparation time for all disciplines as well as later admissions or no admissions Background/Current Conditions: In order to better understand this delay current conditions surrounding the problem were investigated using Lean productivity tools. A root cause analysis and process map were conducted and it was found that when the information was received late, there is a decrease in staff satisfaction due to their inability to prepare ahead of patient's arrival. Figure 1: Process map of the process to identify bed vacancy to bed fulfillment Goals Upon review of the background conditions the following goals were developed in order to reduce waste in the process and reduce the time it takes to fill an empty bed by 50%; (1) Decrease the average time to prepare the admission package, create patient profile in PCC and add to Grasp, Staff indicated that when this occurs there is less time for cleaning staff to sterilize the room prior to the admission

3. Results Staff used tools to reduce waste and decrease time from application receipt to admission of the patient in the facility by 50%. Admission documents were made available electronically to facilitate multi user use at the same time. Visual management tools were put into practice to ensure gains were maintained. (2) have new admissions arrive at the desired time to fill the bed, (3) Improve communication between departments/disciplines (4) improve and increase the amount of time to problem solve (5) Increase amount of time to receive patient medications and (6) increase the amount of time available to cleaning staff to sterilize/prepare room for new patient