Office of Epidemiology and Environmental Health Division Align Priorities -leading to a 50% reduction in time
Summary
The Toledo–Lucas County Health Department (TLCHD) focused its quality improvement (QI) efforts on improving coordination, communication, and the time of completion of outbreak cases. A mean of 44 days was the average open-to-close time for cases of foodborne outbreaks from January 2009 to October 2011. The TLCHD team believes the ability to fine-tune and improve foodborne outbreak procedures will enhance coordination between epidemiologists, registered sanitarians, and their intended targets and partners. Improvement of procedures and coordination will enable TLCHD to ensure the most efficient and effective response to foodborne outbreak cases. After it completed this QI project, TLCHD lowered its open-to-close mean time for foodborne outbreak cases from 44 days to 22 days—a 50% reduction.
Improvement was measured by obtaining data from foodborne outbreak reports via TLCHD epidemiologists. Specifically, mean days per case were calculated from the “date created” and “close date” portions of the foodborne outbreak reports.
Zgodzinski, E. Public Health Quality Improvement Exchange. Office of Epidemiology and Environmental Health Division Align Priorities -leading to a 50% reduction in time. Wed, 10/09/2013 - 12:55. Available at https://phqix.org/content/office-epidemiology-and-environmental-health-division-align-priorities-leading-50-reduction. Accessed October 1, 2023.
Comments
This was a great project that
This was a great project that we could adapt to our situation, during the accreditation process this was an area for improvement.
Thanks for sharing
Carolyn Stegall, REHS