PDCA/PDSA Cycle (Plan, Do, Check/Study, Act)

The county has a high percentage of overweight and obese children. Pleasant Street School staff implemented activities related to nutrition education in a school setting. Student knowledge about fruits and vegetables increased, and the school received additional funds to foster healthy eating.

Access to prenatal care contributes to successful birth outcomes. A Kansas health department found that patients had challenges completing the application process for the Medicaid Children’s Health Insurance Program. By conducting patient education and assistance with the application, the health...

By reducing the time to perform inspections of residential septic and well systems for real estate transactions, the Mahoning County District Board of Health made a positive economic impact in its community and improved customer service relations with local realtors.

Cumberland County Health Department achieved dramatic improvements in the quality of services offered by their Adult Health Clinic through a Kaizen event. Prescription refill wait times decreased from as long as 6 weeks to less than 72 hours, and referrals to specialists, many of which had lengthy...

Following a Pertussis outbreak, a health department worked with families and providers to increase adolescence immunization rates using QI to identify barriers that previously had resulted in undervaccination. In addition, a clinic-specific and county immunization monitoring system was set up to...

This six-county health district department used QI to achieve a 75% increase in response to satisfaction surveys by customers of their environmental health services.

Reducing childhood obesity is a priority for the Oklahoma State Health Department. Staff recognized that children returning for a second year in the afterschool CATCH Kids Club would need a new curriculum and activities to keep them engaged. The Department used QI to design new components and...

This health department found the root cause of the high HIV clinic “no show” to be out of date patient contact information. They developed a simple and timely patient contact update process that dropped the “no show” rate dramatically in 8 weeks.

The health department was concerned about a falling rate of visits by homeless people to the federally funded Health Care for Homeless project despite an increase in the homeless population. They investigated the causes and made several changes including implementing a process for walk-in service...

Committed to minimizing the health and social impact of pandemic influenza in its jurisdiction, this health department applied continuous quality improvement (CQI) tools and methods to improve the accuracy, effectiveness, and timeliness of its risk communications plan and messages to staff and...

Challenged by undesired delays for clinic appointments, high no-show rates, client dissatisfaction, and suboptimal productivity, Macon County Public used QI to implement an open access clinic appointment system that allowed them to schedule appointments within 72 hours for all clients and all...

The Health Department improved the process for obtaining birth and death certificates so customers weren’t forced to miss time from work or take other extraordinary steps to obtain these vital documents in a timely fashion.

In order to improve client satisfaction and increase the efficiency of WIC visits, this medium size local health department used QI to improve their Open Access appointment system. They were able to reduce the time for a complete WIC visit by 25% and increase participant satisfaction to 96%.

An urban local health department found that 35% of mid-level staff did not know who to contact for questions about new department programs and services. This workforce development QI project led to development of a common resource packet that enabled staff to respond more quickly and effectively...

The Alabama state health department trained local health department family planning clinic staff in QI. The QI tools provided helped staff analyze current procedures and identify service delivery bottlenecks and then design interventions resulting in increased capacity and a reduction in waiting...

This local health department improved participation and contributions by their partners in the community to the Community Health Improvement Plan by 70%, leading to strengthened relationships with and more effective collaborative partnerships to take action to improve the community’s health.

This 10-county District health department improved the processes of immunization clinic scheduling, preparation and follow-up and reduced the number of “no shows” , leading to greater efficiency and capacity. The improved process and staff training were then standardized across the 10 counties.

The local health department published the results of restaurant inspections on their website so that people could see them and make choices about where to eat. In addition, the public gained a better understanding of what environmental health staff of the department do to prevent food borne...

The Kane County Health Department utilized QI tools to improve the efficiency of its community meeting process, strengthening the engagement and commitment of community partners.

This local health department addressed an unacceptable rate of low birth weight births by standardizing their referral process and timeframes; successfully making pre-natal care referrals earlier in the gestation period to ultimately improve the health of newborns in their county.

By implementing more accurate Medicaid billing procedures that resulted in an increase in Medicaid match revenue, the local health department was able to re-direct funds to necessary departmental strategic priorities that benefit the health of the local community.

The local health department increased the number of infants and children receiving needed vaccines as part of a WIC visit, rather than referring them to another site and potentially losing that opportunity to protect them from getting a preventable disease or transmitting a vaccine-preventable...

There was a lag between the time when health care providers diagnosed cases of sexually transmitted diseases and the providers notifying the health department. By improving the timeliness of the reports, the health department could quickly reach and treat contacts of the patient, thus...

This health department improved their method of engaging their community partners in the health improvement planning processes through meeting effectiveness surveys, more inclusive community representation, and improved communication.

The health department needed all staff nurses to be able to give vaccinations for emergencies like the H1N1 influenza epidemic, including nurses working in roles that do not involve giving clinical care. They improved the process for keeping all nurses competent in determining when, how, and which...

The health department discovered that most of its employees were unaware of the many of the Department’s media activities for outreach and education. The department made several changes to increase employee awareness of current and new media efforts and achieved a major improvement on all three of...

The county health department used a QI planning approach to improve their planning processes for community meetings resulting in the community becoming more involved in improving its own health.

The Mid-Michigan District Health Department optimized the performance of the automated telephone system for clients calling the health department to assure mis-routings were minimized, customers were directed to intended recipients, and customer satisfaction was improved.

To address the high percentage of Oklahoma’s youth who were overweight or obese, the CATCH (Coordinated Approach to Child Health) after-school program improved their ability to achieve parental involvement and encouragement of at-home physical fitness and nutrition activities by adding fun...