Building a Reliable Health Care System: A Lean Six Sigma Quality Improvement Initiative on Patient Handoff

Background There is limited evidence available identifying best practices to promote and sustain optimal outpatient-to-inpatient handoff processes to ensure safe and reliable continuity of care. Local problem A sentinel event occurred during the transition of care from the outpatient-to-inpatient setting. A root cause analysis revealed that the facility's standard operating procedure for patient handoffs was not consistently followed. Methods A Lean Six Sigma approach was used to improve patient transfer with the implementation of a Situation-Background-Assessment-Recommendation handoff policy. Inferential and statistical process control methods were used to assess performance outcomes pre- and postdissemination. Results Over 36 months there was a slow, steady decrease in patient transfer time including reduced variability. The most significant improvement effect occurred in the third year with a 50% reduction in transfer time. Conclusions Longitudinal monitoring provides the opportunity to accurately identify beneficial outcomes, which develop downstream from initial quality improvement efforts.