Improving the Timely Delivery of Postoperative Radiation in Head and Neck Cancer

The time that elapses between a patient's ablative tumor resection and indicated adjuvant radiation has a significant impact on an individual's local tumor control and survival, and its optimization is in the best interest of the patient. Furthermore, it is a recognized treatment-related quality metric that can have bearing on future provider compensation. Despite these important driving considerations, compliance rates with established goals are low, recently measured to be <50%. Making meaningful and lasting improvements in this requires a system-based approach. This article seeks to provide clinicians practical tools to apply lean health care and flow management principles to identify chief obstacles to timely care in their systems, and effective strategies to overcome common bottlenecks.