Tracking QI Tool Use

Tue, 03/08/2016 - 15:28 -- brandi_wamhoff

Good Afternoon,

I am looking for ways to improve upon our current system for tracking the QI Tools that are used among employees at Kane County Health Department.  At this time, employees are asked to log each tool they use into an excel workbook created for this purpose.  There is a specific workbook for each division and it is located on our Shared drive so that everyone has access to it. 

The problem is that, very few people are using it.  There have been numerous complaints about the location of the tracker and that it is difficult to find.  I have even created a "cheat sheet" to help staff locate various QI Resources on the Shared drive, but so far, it hasn't helped.  I have also tried sending out email reminders without success.

I was wondering if anyone out there has another way that they keep track of tool use that has been popular with staff or any suggestions for a better system? 

Thanks!

 

 

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Submitted by frerickson on

Hi Brandi,

My company, Knowledge Capital Alliance, provides the VMSG Dashboard Public Health Performance Management System which could potentially replace your spreadsheet system (it actually evolved from an Excel-based system, years ago). The Dashboard is in use by health departments around the country.

If you are interested, here is a link to an 18-minute demo video:

https://youtu.be/W5dt6CQG37Y?list=PLtakD9sONParVmx1MYRLV7oYxLSFYn0Pq

If you'd like to  discuss this further, please contact me.

Thanks

Fred Erickson

Fred@kca-inc.com

(480) 225-8193

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Thanx
Fred Erickson

Submitted by Georgianna on

Hi Brandi,

My first question is "why"?  What is the value / purpose for tracking the use of tools?  How will you use that information?  What benefit are they getting from this?  How have you communicated this to your staff?  They may need to understand the value of what you're asking better. 

My second thought was incentive.  When they're logging tool use, are they also saying why/how they used it?  Maybe they could submit a project synopsis similar to how PHQIX does, and be incentivized for doing so.  We use $10 gift cards to our local coffee joint.

Good luck, and I'll look forward to seeing other ideas.

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Georgianna Wood
Accreditation Coordinator
Humboldt County DHHS Public Health

Submitted by bpalinski2 on

Hi Brandi,

I would recommend you transitioning this to a Google Doc if the spreadsheet doesn't use Macros. 

You could have IT put an internet explorer/google chrome/firefox shortcut on everyone's desktop that linked directly to the online Goggle Sheet. 

The major drawback is whether staff could edit it without a google account (I don't recall), although you could possibly create a single login for everyone to use (again it'd have to be tested).

This avoid the common drive and possibly over-writing someone else's information. 

If you want to stick with the common drive file, and you haven't done this already, you might want to make the file "Shared" so multiple people could edit it simultaneously. 

But I would also second Georgianna's  question of what useful information are you gleaning from tracking this metric? 

 

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Brandon Palinski, MPH-VPH, SIT
Quality Assurance & Accreditation Coordinator
Toledo-Lucas County Health Department
419.213.4136
palinskb@co.lucas.oh.us
www.lucascountyhealth.com

Submitted by brandi_wamhoff on

Thanks everyone for the suggestions.  I "tool tracking" system was already in place here when I started in June.  In the time which I have been here, I don't feel that we have really utilized the tool and demonstrated the purpose.  There is a section in which staff are asked to fill in how this tool helped them with their task/project.  I think I am going to need to revisit this with leadership. 

 

 

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Brandi Wamhoff, MPH
Kane County Health Department
Data and Quality Coordinator

Submitted by bpalinski2 on

Hi Brandi,

No worries! We've all inherited some things as we moved into our positions : ). 

With your resposne above in mind, you might want to consider making tool use a teachable function. Maybe incorporate directly into the tools the question of how the tool helped with a specific project. If this data is captured within the tool or your project narrative itself, staff won't need to necessarily enter the data again on a spreadsheet (perhaps days or weeks after they utilized any given tool). 

This would also allow you, as the Data & Quality Coordiantor, to go back to the final version of said tools and collate the data (reducing the number of hands modifying a tracking document). 

I could easily see a newsletter or set of posters that then indicate why or how certain tools were better suited to a process or were beneficial to its completion (or using the project's story board to demonstrate this as well). This would be more useful, in my opinion, than which tools people find as their favorites (and this might also help staff branch out to use new tools that may be more relevant than the one's they already know). 

Just some extra thoughts.

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Brandon Palinski, MPH-VPH, SIT
Quality Assurance & Accreditation Coordinator
Toledo-Lucas County Health Department
419.213.4136
palinskb@co.lucas.oh.us
www.lucascountyhealth.com

Submitted by gkroberts on

Hi Brandi,

I second all of the responses above. Fred's suggestion for the VMSG dashboard is great if you are looking for performance management system that incoporates QI tool/project tracking.

Georgiana's incentive idea has worked for us, but we realized that after about a year people were getting bored with the idea so we had to change the incentive to re-create interest. For this purpose, we created a "Team Award" for QI project teams that have completed a successful PDSA cycle. This will be paired with our employee recognition award.

On top of tracking tools, do you ask staff to submit anything else for QI projects? Using a charter/storyboard might eliminate multiple steps/barriers.

For us it has been more meaningful for QI project teams to submit completed charters/storyboards that list the QI tools within them becuase then we can see the big picture of why the tool was used and how the findings of the tools were applied. I think the key here is to make the templates easy to use (1-page) and not too time-consuming because there will always be resistance from staff to submit something that they are not familiar with. I'm happy to share our charter and storyboard templates with you, so please email me if you like.

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Gurleen Roberts, MPH
Director of Quality Management
Cobb & Douglas Public Health
Marietta, GA
gurleen.roberts@dph.ga.gov

Submitted by Jne310 on

I second the utility and comments above.  Do you all produce storyboards?  To me, that is a better visual for leadership and staff to get the full picture, including what type of tool was used and how rather than the actual counting of which tools are being used or however you are using it.  I think that in true QI fashion, do a fun QI project on the utility of the actual tool and see if better solutions come up and/or get to the root cause of why the tool was created perhaps? 

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C. Janie Cambron, RS, BS, MPH
Program Manager, EnviroHealthLink, Kentucky's Environmental PH Tracking Network
Kentucky Department for Public Health
Phone: 502-564-4537 ext. 4088; janie.cambron@ky.gov

Submitted by Lesli Uebel on

Does anyone have a photo of a story board they would be willing to share, such as the one recommended above? And/or a template for a storyboard?

Lesli Leone Uebel, MPH, CHES
Systems Development and Policy Specialist
Reproductive Health Program
Public Health Division
lesli.l.uebel@state.or.us

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Grace Gorenflo's picture
Submitted by Grace Gorenflo on

Hi Lesli,

Please see this link for a "tried and true" storyboard template -- designed specifically for a PDCA cycle:

http://www.health.state.mn.us/divs/opi/qi/toolbox/storyboard.html.  

For an example, you can search PHQIX for "storyboard" (with many search results!) and pick a submission, go to "QI Tool Documentation" sub-subheading, under the "Focus Activities" subheading.  You should see one downloaded there.

If you are working on a Kaizen effort, a PRiSM chart could be useful -- just search for an NNPHI Kaizen QI program in PHQIX (there are several!) and again you'll find one in the "QI Tool Documentation" section that follows the "Focus activities" subheading.

I hope this is helpful!

Grace

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Submitted by gkroberts on

Hi Leslie,

I have attached a storyboard template that we currently use. Prior to this one, we used one similar to the one Grace has linked to above. Both work very well and communicate the summarized QI project in an appealing way.

Some tips on how to improve your storyboard can be found in similar community forum threads:

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Gurleen Roberts, MPH
Director of Quality Management
Cobb & Douglas Public Health
Marietta, GA
gurleen.roberts@dph.ga.gov