title: Development of a discharge lounge: the use of E-mail to facilitate the quality improvement process.
abstract: Quality improvement is often seen as a time-consuming and cumbersome process with high "people" overhead as employees are pulled from their regular duties to attend meetings. As a result, there has been a trend toward tackling smaller, well defined problems with quickly achievable results. The E-mail approach used in this instance offers an approach that may bridge this gap. It allows a large group of people to participate in a complex project without the need for structured meetings spread out over a long period of time. The result, a blend of the strong points of quality improvement (inclusive, using the wisdom of a group of people) with a speedy, low overhead process, seems to address the concerns that have slowed the acceptance of the quality improvement process in many organizations thus far.
authors.affiliation: Medical Service, Providence General Medical Center, Everett, WA 98206-1147, USA.
authors.forename: R J
authors.initials: RJ
authors.lastname: Rafoth
mesh_terms: D003195:Computer Communication Networks / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006801:Humans; D008332:Management Quality Circles / Q000458:organization & administration*; D019982:Organizational Case Studies; D010351:Patient Discharge / Q000592:standards*; D010362:Patients' Rooms; D011340:Problem Solving; D017749:Total Quality Management / Q000379:methods*