Center for Transforming Healthcare Releases Targeted Solutions Tool

• 8/31/2010
• Author: Audrie Bretl Roelf
• Category: Benchmark Blog
• 5805 Views
• 0 Comments
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How can Six Sigma help to stop the spread of health-care associated infections? If you have heard about The Joint Commission Center for Transforming Healthcare, you may also have heard that the Center is doing some interesting and innovative things using Lean, Six Sigma, and Robust Process Improvement ideologies. These performance improvement methods can be used to help solve some of health care’s most persistent quality and safety problems—including the spread of health-care associated infections.

For example, in mid-September, Joint Commission–accredited hospitals will have access, via their Joint Commission Connect™ extranet site, to an application called The Targeted Solutions Tool™ (TST), which delivers solutions for  difficult and pressing safety and quality problems. While the TST initially contains information on hand hygiene compliance, content will be expanded to include contributing factors, root causes, and solutions to other Center projects. These include increasing the effectiveness of hand-off communications, reducing the risk of wrong-site surgery, and addressing surgical site infections.

The TST guides health care teams through a step-by-step process to do the following:
• Measure their organization’s actual performance
• Identify barriers to excellent performance
• Identify proven, tested, and targeted solutions.

The advanced process improvement methods used by organizations participating in the Center’s pilot program on increasing hand hygiene compliance have been simplified by the TST and are now available to all Joint Commission–accredited organizations. Organizations do not need statistical data analysis capability or specialized performance improvement expertise to use the TST; the Center designed the self-paced tool to be clearly understood and used by an organization’s staff so that no new resources are required to implement it. Even better, TST is available at no cost and the entire process is confidential.

Will you make use of the TST in your organization? I’d love to know how it goes.