Local Health Department, City-County

Using a PDCA approach, the Philadelphia Department of Public Health (PDPH) achieved a more efficient process for onboarding new employees. The amount of paper used went from 136 pages to 16 pages, an 88% reduction. The mean monthly staff time dedicated to the onboarding process dropped from 653...

Missoula City-County Health Department used quality improvement to improve the functionality and satisfaction of its infectious disease after hours response team members, thus ensuring that emerging infectious disease issues in the community would be managed appropriately.

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...

Budget literacy of health department staff is a key attribute necessary before decentralizing financial management and program oversight. After an assessment that determined that staff had knowledge gaps, an educational intervention was initiated to increase their financial management competency....

In becoming ready for PHAB accreditation, the City of St. Louis Department of Health’s performance management team used quality planning to create, test, and install a performance management system. The process included a fishbone diagram of the barriers to a culture of quality, an affinity diagram...

Communicable disease (CD) follow-up: Staff let their fingers do the walking using social media to significantly improve the timeliness and effectiveness of client contact and case completion procedures for CD clients.

Henry County Health Department’s (HCHD’s) strategic plan included addressing employee turnover and job dissatisfaction. Employee turnover and job satisfaction are related to how confident an employee feels when starting a new position, which links back to the effectiveness of the orientation...

The time participants spend waiting for appointments at the WIC clinic can lead to dissatisfaction with the WIC program and could negate efforts to retain program participants. The Marion Public Health WIC team used a fishbone diagram to determine that the primary root cause of long wait times in...

The number of breastfeeding women who have access to a certified lactation counselor soared when Missoula City-County Health Department staff used QI to improve their internal processes.

Knox County Health Dept. demonstrates how use of partner developed communication standards can improve communication satisfaction among groups participating in a coalition.

Staff are Customers too! How involving all staff in the identification of barriers to completing department offered QI Training resulted in greater acceptance of, participation in, and an increase in the number of staff completing six required training modules.

WIC enrollment is well below the eligible population in Yellowstone, MT, and a substantial number of those enrolled do not regularly pick up their food coupons, resulting in automatic disenrollment and loss of benefits. Utilizing PDCA, RiverStone Health addressed the root causes of the drop off in...

Denver Health used rapid cycle improvement to implement a brief tobacco cessation intervention (2As &R) in a high risk urban family planning and sexual health clinic. The intervention was enhanced by modifications to the electronic medical record system. They plan to spread this intervention...

In Fillmore County Public Health department, the time from notification to investigation of health problems and environmental health hazards (animal bites, infectious diseases, and nuisances) took longer than desired. Data was collected to understand the current state; investigations ranged from...