Three Quality Improvement Tactics to Help Ensure Success and Sustainability

摘要

In this issue of The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety, Melton et al. describe the journey that Lakeland Regional Health (Lakeland, Florida) undertook to substantially improve patient flow through the emergency department (ED), reducing the average length of stay almost in half and reducing the percentage of patients who left without being seen (LWBS) by almost 10-fold. Most importantly, these improvements were sustained for more than two years. The article, "Impact of a Hospitalwide Quality Improvement Initiative on Emergency Department Throughput and Crowding Measures," describes three tactics that should be incorporated into quality improvement (QI) efforts to successfully spread culture change, meet measurement goals, and sustain change.