Step 3: Implement Your Care Coordination QI Plan

Step 3: Implement Your Care Coordination QI Plan 

Once you identify the processes and staff needed for your task, you’ll want to use a quality improvement (QI) framework to implement the task into your clinic workflow. QI is the framework used to systematically improve the way health care is delivered to patients. It refers to the process of planning and testing changes on a small scale, to implement them across the entire practice. 

This toolkit utilizes the Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) method of QI to help you figure out which strategies work best. The PDSA provides a systematic framework for working through tasks and will help you document the process, communicate with staff, and work through issues that may arise. 

The PDSA Worksheet will help you plan and test different ways to implement your priority tasks in hopes of finding a strategy that works. You’ll need to complete a new worksheet for each test of each priority task.

Start with the priority task that seems the easiest to implement. For additional instruction on how to complete a PDSA, check out the resources listed in the Quality Improvement section on the Training and Support tab of this toolkit.

Goal: The goal of Step 3 is to test different strategies for implementing your priority task.

Once you determine what works best, you can establish a system that allows you to successfully integrate care coordination services into your workflow.

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1. Plan: Develop a Test and Make a Prediction

Answer the following questions in the box on the PDSA Worksheet. Then make a prediction about what you think will happen. 

• Who will be performing the task?
• What specific things will they be doing?
• Where will the task be performed?
• When will it happen?

 

2. Do: Conduct the Test and Collect Data

Carry out the plan you created. Start small. You can test out your task on a few patients, with a few providers, or over a short period of time. 

Document what happens, including any data you are able to gather. Note any barriers you encounter, and what goes well.

 

3. Study: Analyze the Data and Summarize the Results

How did it go? Look at the data you collected and summarize the results.

Are there any trends in the data? Compare the actual results to the prediction you made in the Plan phase of the PDSA cycle. How do they compare?

 

4. Act: Refine Changes for the Next Cycle

 

Based on the results, decide what to do next. The 3 options are to adapt, adopt or abandon: 

 

• Adapt: Consider what changes could be made to improve the way your task was implemented. Get a new PDSA worksheet and go through these steps again with those modifications. Continue making small changes and working through the PDSA cycle until you find a strategy that works well.

• Adopt: If you are satisfied with how the test went and want to implement it across the clinic, create a timeline for bringing it up to full scale and execute it.

• Abandon: If your plan was unsuccessful or you’ve gone through this cycle a few times and nothing seems to be working, you may want to abandon the idea. If you decide to abandon this plan, consider other strategies or services that could be implemented.

 

Need Help?

Our experts can provide technical assistance to you through this process. Fill out the Implementation Training and Support Request Form and contact us at BFH-FamilyResourceCenter@la.gov or 504-568-3405 for more information.