Question

Case Study 6

In 2008, Medicare and Medicaid identified that they will no longer reimburse for hospital-acquired pressure ulcers (HAPUs). In the fourth quarter of 2007, a facility identified eight HAPUs during a quality review.

A. You are charged with creating a DMAIC to address the problem of HAPU at your organization. Who will be included in your working team?

B.   What should happen during the "define" phase?

C.  What steps should be included in the "measure" phase?

D.  What are keys to the "analyze" phase? Why are these important?

E. The team developed a work plan from the "improve" phase. Based on the information obtained, the team decides to standardize the process changes. How can this be accomplished?

Answer 1

Answer: The working team consisits of :

• People from marketing department
• People from healthcare department
• People from finance department
• Internal customers
• Final users of the process
• Statisticians
• Business Analysts

DMAIC is for the five phases that make up the process:

• Define the problem, improvement activity, opportunity for improvement, the project goals, and customer (internal and external) requirements.
• Measure process performance.
• Analyze the process to determine root causes of variation, poor performance (defects).
• Improve process performance by addressing and eliminating the root causes.
• Control the improved process and future process performance.