title: To reduce the average length of stay of patients who are admitted for DA-EPOCH-R chemotherapy regimen.
abstract: Healthcare institutions are often faced with bed crunch situation. As a result, patients requiring inpatient hospital stay for cancer treatment are delayed and this could lead to compromised overall disease response. Apart from the early discharge of patients to step-down care and explore alternatives of treatment setting, one of the ways to reduce length of stay is to improve on the efficiency of work processes. A baseline study demonstrated that delays in prescribing chemotherapy orders has led to an increased inpatient stay of seven days for a five day treatment regimen. This has profound consequences in terms of costs, patient safety, and utilisation of healthcare resources. A quality improvement project was initiated to review and revise the workflow and processes involved for the entire episode of treatment. A post-implementation review of the interventions showed cost savings, a reduction of average length of stay from seven days to six days (with a total of 28 days saved over six months), and improved patient and staff experience.
authors.affiliation: National Cancer Institute, Singapore.
authors.forename: Yee Mei
authors.initials: YM
authors.lastname: Lee