Step 3: Implement and Test Interventions

There are numerous ways for putting prevention into practice and prioritizing patient-centered care. It may seem that implementing, and testing interventions would take more time, but as you put them into practice, they become faster and easier, and second nature. These small steps will help reduce inefficiencies and targeting prevention helps to reduce output efforts later. The most important aspect is to get the entire staff, as well as your patients, thinking and talking about prevention first. Make sure everyone in your practice understands the importance of each intervention and their roles/responsibilities before implementing to increase buy-in and success.

1. Choose and Plan Intervention(s)

Includes generic forms to help planning: fishbone, histogram, etc. Access a Project Planning form for the specific topic and choose your intervention(s). Feel free to utilize the forms below.

2. Test the Intervention(s)

By now, you have assessed your current performance with baseline data, evaluated your existing processes, and identified interventions or changes that your quality improvement team believes will make an improvement to patient care. It is important to test these ideas on a small scale before widely implementing them. Even if you are using evidence-based best practices, you will not want to jump to full implementation of a major change without testing your new process.

Begin by testing the intervention with one facility, one office, one physician (if in a multi-physician group), or just a few patients. Conduct several rapid test cycles to help you determine if performance is improving. These tests may also bring to light immediate problems, such as new workflow issues or staff misunderstandings, and provide the opportunity to make revisions and retest.