ArticleBMJ open quality2024
Lean Six Sigma quality improvement approach to implement clinical practice guidelines for prescribing opiates for chronic pain in a primary care setting.
Article in BMJ open quality, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
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Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- Sustainable care quality improvement: a scoping literature review of performance measurement in lean healthcare implementations.BMC health services research · 2025Article
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundImplementing guidelines for chronic opioid management during a clinic merger posed significant challenges. Our aim was to increase the percentage of chronic pain evaluations and urine toxicology tests in patients on chronic opioid therapy from the baseline rate of less than 20% to 50% within 1 year at an academic, primary care clinic.
methodsWe applied the Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control (DMAIC) approach of Lean Six Sigma for this quality improvement (QI) project. The QI tools included the creation of stakeholder mapping, root cause analysis, process flow mapping and a driver diagram. Lack of patient and provider education emerged as a significant barrier. The outcome measures were percentage of chronic pain evaluations and urine drug toxicology with an increase in controlled substance agreement completion rates as our process measures. Major interventions included patient and provider education, leveraging health information technology, care coordination and implementing new clinic protocols. Data analysis was performed by monthly run charts. Descriptive statistics were used to summarise clinical variables, while χ
resultsWe observed an increase in completion rates of clinic visits for chronic pain, rising from 19.0% to 51.9% (p<0.001). During study period, we observed a steady increase in chronic pain evaluations with a median of 4.5. Urine toxicology completion rates increased from 19.9% to 65.8% (p<0.001) during the preintervention and postintervention periods. We observed variable changes in urine toxicology rates with a median of 5.19. Furthermore, we observed an increase in controlled substance agreement completion rates, increasing to 50% from the baseline rate of <10%.
conclusionsEducation to patients and providers, shared decision-making using a patient-centred approach, enhancement of health information technology and system-based interventions in clinic protocols and workflows contributed to the success of this QI project. The DMAIC approach may facilitate the implementation of practice guidelines for chronic opioid therapy and enhance providers' opioid prescribing practices.
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