title: Quality improvement project to determine outpatient chemotherapy capacity and improve utilization.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Buffalo, NY 14263, USA. marcia.gruber@roswellpark.org
authors.forename: Marcia
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Gruber
authors.forename: Debra
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Smith
authors.forename: Charnese
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: O'Neal
authors.forename: Kelli
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Hennessy
authors.forename: Melissa
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Therrien
mesh_terms: 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