Quality improvement project to determine outpatient chemotherapy capacity and improve utilization.
Nurses in chemotherapy administration settings are constantly challenged to increase utilization while maintaining patient safety. A performance improvement project was carried out to identify barriers to patient throughput and opportunities to improve utilization while not compromising patient safety. We found ways to safely increase the number of patients from 92 to 108 per day; however, patient tardiness and staff vacancies had a negative impact on patient wait times and nursing staff overtime.
Gruber
Marcia
M
Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Buffalo, NY 14263, USA. marcia.gruber@roswellpark.org
Smith
Debra
D
O'Neal
Charnese
C
Hennessy
Kelli
K
Therrien
Melissa
M
D000554:Ambulatory Care Facilities / Q000458:organization & administration* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D001071:Appointments and Schedules; D017598:Efficiency, Organizational; D006801:Humans; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000188:drug therapy* / Q000451:nursing; D009518:New York; D009859:Oncology Nursing / Q000458:organization & administration* / Q000592:standards; D017751:Safety Management; D017749:Total Quality Management