CONTINUOUS QUALITY IMPROVEMENT IN HEALTHCARE

May 29, 2012

8:15

Registration and Continental Breakfast

9:00

Welcoming Remarks from Insight Information

9:05

Opening Remarks from the Chair

Carolyn Hoffman RN, MN
Vice President, Clinical Performance Improvement
Alberta Health Services

9:15

Integrating Quality Improvement: Provincial and Zone/Regional Quality Improvement Planning to Enable Front Line Success

Moderator:
Pete Pande 
President
Pivotal Resources, Inc.

Carolyn Hoffman RN, MN 
Vice President, Clinical Performance Improvement
Alberta Health Services

David Miyauchi, MD, FRCP(C) 
Deputy Head, Department of Psychiatry,
Alberta Health Services, Calgary Zone
Clinical Professor, Department of Psychiatry,
Faculty of Medicine, University of Calgary

Don Shilton 
President
St. Mary's General Hospital (Ontario)

Karen Wolk Feinstein, PhD 
President and Chief Executive Officer
Pittsburgh Regional Health Initiative

• Why consider provincial and zone/regional QI initiatives in healthcare?
• Policy, organizational, and operational issues and obstacles
• Implementation – is there a best approach? A best level?
• Aligning provincial and regional healthcare objectives and local care delivery – doable?
• Integrating a continuous improvement culture across the board
• How far can Lean/Six Sigma QI approaches take us – is there a limit?

10:30

Networking Coffee Break
Sponsored by:

10:45

Quality Improvement– The Way Ahead for Alberta Healthcare

The Honourable Fred Horne 
Minister
Alberta Health and Wellness
MLA for Edmonton-Rutherford

11:15

Physician Partners and Leaders in Achieving QI Goals

Jana Davidson MD, FRCP(C) 
Medical Director and Head of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
PHSA BC Mental Health and Addiction Services
University of British Columbia

Jayna M. Holroyd-Leduc, MD FRCPC 
QI Lead, Department of Medicine
Medical Co-ordinator, Clinical Informatics
Alberta Health Services - Calgary
Associate Professor, Division of Geriatrics, Departments of Medicine and CHS
University of Calgary

Physicians are essential partners for the success of any QI strategy in healthcare organizations. What are the key factors that will ensure there is traction and continuity in physician engagement on these initiatives?

• Value proposition for physicians
  • Better care
  • Patient satisfaction
  • Improved standardization of care and efficiency
  • More patients treated
  • Work life balance
  • Workplace quality and atmosphere
• Common barriers to physician engagement and how to get around them
  • Attitude of skepticism – need for physician leads and mentors
  • Absence of data – show me the evidence
  • Need for QI techniques and training – better time management and dedicated training time
  • Entropy and resistance to change – provide incentives and motivation

12:15

Networking Luncheon

1:15

Strategies for Organizational Transformation – Ensuring Effective Leadership, Governance and Accountability

Karen Wolk Feinstein, PhD 
President and Chief Executive Officer
Pittsburgh Regional Health Initiative

• Facilitating organizational transformation to a continuous improvement culture
• Paradigm shift – the role of leadership for successful transitions
• Embracing the philosophy and implementing the management techniques
• Macro level strategies
• System quality improvement – leadership role
• Alignment across the system
• Management philosophy
• Training strategies for leadership
• Oversight and accountability
• A patient-centric model
• Paying the gains forward

2:00

Ensuring Patient Centred Improvements in Healthcare – Building a Patient and Family Centred Care Community from the Ground Up

Paul Boucher MD, FRCP 
Clinical Assistant Professor
Dept. of Critical Care Medicine/Cardiac Sciences
University of Calgary
Intensivist
CVICU Medical Director
Alberta Health Services

Lucy Reyes RN, MN 
Manager FMC Medical Cardiology 81 and 82
Cardiac Specialty Services and Clinics
Alberta Health Services

• Putting the patient at the centre
  • Listening before acting
  • Patient input in goal and priority setting
  • The patient as partner in healthcare transformations
• Using the Alberta Improvement Way ( AIW) to build a patient and family centred care community in medical cardiology
  • Front line input and the patient – where the rubber hits the road
• Leadership at the bedside
  • Strategies and lessons learned

3:00

Networking Refreshment Break

3:15

Early Stage Considerations – Deployment Strategies for QI and PI

Carolyn Hoffman RN MN
Vice President, Clinical Performance Improvement
Alberta Health Services

Byron Moore
Director, Improvement Capacity Building
Alberta Health Services

• Getting started – first essential steps in the system re-design process
• Where should improvements begin – the thin edge of the wedge
• Defining the goals – what to consider
• Setting the milestones – what works best
• Essentials for implementation
  • identifying the opportunity and engaging change champions
  • building understanding and selecting the tools
  • establishing the responsibility and accountability
  • supporting frontline healthcare professionals, local managers and senior leaders to take action to improve
  • establishing the timelines and the concrete milestone targets
  • sustaining the results

4:00

Large Scale Healthcare Transformations: Five Key Steps

Dale Schattenkirk, CHRP
President and CEO, Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt
Learning To See Consulting

• The five keys
• Does scale matter
• The five year plan
• Case studies and lessons learned

4:45

IT/IM Strategies that Support Quality and Efficiency

Dr. Andrew Patullo MD, FRCP
Senior Medical Director, Clinical Informatics
Alberta Health Services

• What are the health organization goals for change?
• How does IT/IM fill the knowledge gap and drive clinical transformation?
• How do we align IT/IM to QI objectives?
• Planning and building the informatics tools, teams and processes
• Ensuring value for investment
• Case studies and lessons learned

5:15

Conference Adjourns for the Day

MAY 30, 2012

8:30

Continental Breakfast

9:00

Chair's Opening Remarks

9:05

Franchising our Health System - Sustaining and Spreading Best Practices

Dave Brewin, P.Eng, MHSC, MBA(c) 
Executive Director
Provincial Access Team
Alberta Health Services

In this session you will hear about the move to standardized access processes that have been embraced by Alberta, and how QI methodologies are being harnessed to identify and disseminate best practices provincially.

• Harvesting best practices
• Developing "gold standards" that improve quality and allow room for local differences
• Developing sustainable models for continuous improvements
• Avoiding common pitfalls of the "cookie cutter"

9:45

Adapting QI Strategies to the Needs of the Front Lines of Care – Care Transformation Case Study

S. Ann Colbourne, MD, FRCP(C), FACP 
Associate Zone Medical Director - Integrated Quality Management
Alberta Health Services

This case study will focus on the streamlining and transformation of care that resulted from a pilot project aimed at improving care for internal medicine patients. A key part of the project was the identifying of the most suitable care team to provide the best possible service to each patient. Among the issues addressed will be:

• Designing the interdisciplinary team adapted to patient needs
• Incorporating patient input in the care plan
• Improving communication between patient and care providers
• Improving communication among care providers
• Improved monitoring
• Individualized patient care
• Enhanced team work
• Next steps

10:30

Networking Coffee Break
Sponsored by:

10:45

Measuring the Impact and Results of QI Strategies – Metrics to Grow By

Tom Briggs PhD 
Executive Director, Performance Measurement and Reporting
Data Integration Measurement and Reporting
Alberta Health Services

Anurag Pandey 
Director, Improvement Design & Delivery
Alberta Health Services

"What you cannot measure is not real." How do you go about ensuring that the changes brought about by QI strategies are real, and positive? For healthcare QI, measurement strategies need to be a crucial part of the transformation and project planning right from the start. What are the key elements you need in order to rest assured that your measurement strategy is in line with the QI goals you are working toward? Is the data collection and analysis correct, timely and useful?

11:45

Clinical Workforce Strategies for Healthcare Improvement

Michael Moore 
Staffing Innovation/Lean Transformation Services
Vancouver Coastal Health

Betty-Lynn Morrice 
Associate Chief Health Professions Officer and Vice President
Health Professions Strategy and Practice
Alberta Health Services

Without comprehensive approaches to the human side of QI, no change strategy will ultimately be successful in the long term. Workforce optimization is a key component of continuous improvement.

• From command and control to coach and teach
• Eliminating non-value add behaviors
• Harness the collective intelligence of all staff members
• Reduce sick time and absenteeism
• Creating a positive and respectful work environment
• Motivation strategies for peak performing departments
• Buy-in, commitment and renewal
• Impact of leadership style
• Reinforcement and rewards
• Certification of skills and ongoing training
• Collective intelligence and group reinforcement
• Defining scope of practice
• Facilitating optimal team work

12:45

Networking Luncheon

1:45

Ensuring Patient and Staff Safety While Embracing Continuous Quality Improvement

Frederick Southwick, M.D.
Professor, Division of Infectious Diseases
University of Florida College of Medicine
Director, New Quality and Safety Initiatives
University of Florida and Shands Health Care System
Author of Critically Ill: A 5 Point Plan to Cure Healthcare Delivery

• Quality and safety go hand in hand: What key lessons can we take away from high performing industries and championship athletic teams?
• The nature of human error: How do we design systems to make our patients safe
• Leadership: Who should lead? How do leaders bring about true changes in the way we do things?
• How do we create a culture that truly focuses on the quality and safety of health care delivery?

2:30

Networking Refreshment Break

2:45

"No Patient Left Behind" – Continuous Improvement for Emergency Departments

Nancy Guebert, RN, BSN, MCEd.
Alberta Health Services
Vice President
Rockyview General Hospital

Debbie Goulard, R.N., BSN, MSA 
Executive Director Critical Care, ED, Cardiac Services, NICU, PADIS/RAAPID
Rockyview General Hospital
Alberta Health Services

• LEAN principles applied to meeting Provincial Emergency Department Performance Targets
• Frontline staff engagement in process improvement Technology enhancements – website, dashboards, apps
• The role of data in sustaining improvements
• Outcomes and next steps

3:45

Leading Improvement – Essentials for Executives and Managers to Deliver Results and Build an Improvement Culture

Pete Pande 
President
Pivotal Resources, Inc.

Effective teams and front-line engagement are only part of what's needed to build a high-performing improvement capability. Leaders at all levels have a huge influence, both on short-term results as well as the growth of a patient-focused improvement culture.

Drawing from experience with organizations from health care to high tech, Mr. Pande will provide practical insights into how leaders can help, or hinder achievement and offer "News You Can Use" tools and techniques that leaders can apply to their own improvement efforts. Topics include:

• Improvement leadership paradoxes – How and why "contradictory" objectives are essential
• Common habits to break, and build
• Managing and optimizing your "Improvement Portfolio"
• Short-term actions to focus energies and accelerate results
• Assessing and prioritizing change management actions

4:30

Pre-conference Intensive Workshops | May 28, 2012

Workshop A – 9:00 a.m. to Noon

Performance Improvement 101 (LEAN/Six Sigma/AIW) – Key Concepts and Essential Terminology for Continuous Quality Improvement

Steve Peirce
Six Sigma Black Belt, CMQ/OE, CQPA Improvement Consultant
Alberta Health Services

Do you know what the terms "TPS", "Kaizen", "Six Sigma", "AIW" and "Gemba" refer to? Have you not yet been involved in a Lean project but want to learn more about the philosophy, the methods and the tools? This in-depth workshop will deliver the essentials of these continuous quality improvement methodologies and provide you with ample opportunities to ask questions and receive the details you are looking for on topics such as:

• Lean Thinking, Just-in-Time, and the Toyota Production System
• Six Sigma: the key to understanding and managing variation
• Going to the Gemba; Kaizen and engagement
• Value Stream Mapping (VSM)
  • Current state VSM – examining your processes to identify weak links
  • Future state VSM – capitalize on the improvement opportunities
• Value analysis – eliminating waste
• Root cause analysis – digging deep for the true source of the problem
• Gap analysis – action plan for transformation from current to future state
• Value graph – prioritizing action items and setting the change agenda based on effort required and value added
• Pulling it all together – The Alberta Health Services Improvement Way

This is a must attend introductory session for anyone new to the topic. In this session these techniques and tools will be explored in the context of the Alberta Health Services Improvement Way. A detailed glossary of key terms will be provided as well as materials that have been specially developed by the workshop leader, a Lean expert with full accreditation and multi-sector experience.

Steve Peirce has 25 years of experience both as an operations team leader and as a continuous improvement specialist at Canada Post, and has recently joined Alberta Health Services as a Process Improvement Consultant. Steve's experience has focused on application of continuous improvement thinking and methods in transactional and service environments. Steve is a Six Sigma Black Belt and has completed a Lean Black Belt program. He also holds Certified Manager of Quality / Organizational Excellence, and Certified Quality Process Analyst designations from the American Society for Quality, as well as a Quality Management Certificate from the University of Manitoba.

Steve served for 6 years as a Director and Vice Chair of the Quality Council of Alberta and has been an instructor in the Quality Assurance Certificate program at the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology.

12:00 – 1:00 Light lunch will be served for delegates attending both workshops

Workshop B – 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.

An Analytics Process to Support Operational Healthcare Improvement

Jason Scarlett PhD, PEng 
Health System Simulation Engineer
Data Integration Measurement and Reporting – Strategic Analytics Unit
Alberta Health Services

Effectively designed analytical or measurement processes are crucial to QI projects whether this be from the early stages of selecting and acquiring the data you need, to the final delivery of meaningful analysis on outcomes and results. This workshop will provide (1) a roadmap that highlights the inherent and often unknown analytic process that supports many process improvement initiatives as well as (2) a model for breaking down the components of any queuing system to enable measuring of improvement initiatives.

Topics will include:

• Acquiring data: tips and tools to extract and clean large data sets
• Representing data in graphs: we'll cover the basic representation techniques and pitfalls
• A general queuing system explained: the Demand-Capacity – Flow paradigm
• Operational improvements: how to pinpoint the impact (or lack thereof) of an initiative
• Dashboards: presenting the final results via rich interactivity

This in-depth workshop will afford you time and opportunity to ask questions of the expert workshop leader, and you will receive his specially prepared written materials to enhance your learning process.

Jason Scarlett is an operations analyst specializing in process modeling, with experience in both industrial and health care applications. His undergraduate degree in Manufacturing Engineering from the University of Calgary (1997) equipped him in helping design one of western Canada's largest manufacturing plants. The 750,000 square foot facility provided experience in implementing quality control programs, integrating scheduling systems, designing process flow, and managing capacity. Jason later returned to school graduating from the Schulich School of Engineering with a PhD in Engineering (2007) and both academic and conference awards. Prior to completing his PhD, Jason began working with the then Calgary Health Region and is now with the Alberta Health Services where he tells compelling stories with data and analysis as a part the Strategic Analytics Unit.

MAINTENANCE OF CERTIFICATION

Attendance at this program entitles certified Canadian College of Health Leaders members (CHE / Fellow) to 8 Category II credits toward their maintenance of certification requirement.

CEOs, Senior Administrators, Medical Directors, Chiefs of Staff, Directors and Managers of:

• Performance Improvement, Safety and Quality, Operations, Corporate Services, Clinical Care, Laboratory Services, Emergency Departments, Decision Support

And:

• Consultants, Educators and Trainers, Researchers, Ministers, Deputy Ministers, Public Policy Analysts and Advisers

From:

• Health Regions, Hospitals, Long Term Care and Rehabilitation Centres, Regional and Community Health Centres, Private and Public Laboratories, Diagnostic Imaging Services, Provincial Health Ministries, Health Canada, Professional Associations and Colleges

Dear colleague,

Delivering lasting improvements in the quality of healthcare services in the face of limited budgets has become the number one priority for most healthcare organizations. In the context of economic constraints and ballooning demand and expectations, how can health ministries, zones/regions, organizations and front line managers and healthcare professionals, ensure these primary objectives of healthcare systems are met, while also improving safety and service satisfaction for both patients and front line staff?

This Insight Information healthcare event for Alberta and western Canada will focus on leading edge, proven strategies for achieving process and outcome improvements in healthcare. Using practical case studies and reporting on a range of strategies that include Lean, Six Sigma, Alberta Health Services Improvement Way and more, the conference will support the efforts of provincial, regional and organization healthcare leaders, as they institute comprehensive and sustainable strategies for improving the quality of healthcare delivered in Canada in a cost effective manner.

Topics that you have told us are important to you and that will be addressed in this conference include:

• Ensuring patient centred improvements in healthcare – Building a patient and family centred care community from the ground up
• Planning and building informatics tools, teams and processes
• Motivation strategies for peak performing departments
• Designing safe systems for patients
• PM strategies to support continuous improvement

Don't miss this opportunity to benefit from the hard won lessons of leading improvement experts in Canadian healthcare and beyond. And, for added value, two pre-conference workshops will offer the opportunity for intensive, in-depth learning on two essential topics: Performance Improvement 101 (LEAN/Six Sigma/AIW) – Key Concepts and Essential Terminology for Continuous Quality Improvement, and secondly, An Analytics Process to Support Operational Healthcare Improvement.

I look forward to seeing you there!

Carolyn Hoffman RN, MN 
Vice President, Clinical Performance Improvement
Alberta Health Services

SILVER SPONSORS

Please note: Full payment is required in advance of conference dates. Please make all cheques payable to Insight Information.