From talk to action: what performance improvement is really all about

In today's ever increasingly competitive healthcare environment, our customers are demanding more efficient, easily accessible, and high quality service, and we are being asked to do more and more with oftentimes limited resources. As such, continually evaluating our department's operations, identifying opportunities for improvement, and commencing upon improvement initiatives is essential for an organization, and an administrator, to be successful. This article presents a "call to action" for the initiation of on-going performonce improvement efforts, and provides an overview of sample tools and strategies necessary to both identify opportunities for improvement and develop effective strategies to accomplish them. In addition, best practices for obtaining substantial financial and customer satisfaction data, as well as specific tools to engage stakeholders (management, staff, physicians, and so on) in achieving performance improvement success, are discussed. For clarity, a case study focusing on successful improvement initiatives with a central scheduling office will be presented.