Parking at the Moores Cancer Center has always been problematic. It goes without saying that parking has huge implications for patient satisfaction. In the MCC Executive Operations Meeting, Matt Taylor RTT, Director of Radiation Oncology Services volunteered to do a deep-dive into this issue. Two RMAS staff, Ross Mccall and Mary Fisher teamed up and approached it as a Lean Healthcare Optimization project. They identified multiple areas for improvement which greatly reduced code misuse and excess charges, saving the Department $25K/year. They also developed a proposal to reserve dedicated parking spots within the Athena Parking Structure for Radiation and Infusion patients. If approved, this model would reduce parking expenses for Radiation and Infusion by 50% or $170K/year! The strategy would also free up staff time and improve the patient parking experience. Great job Ross, Mary, and all the team members contributing to this project.

A few of our RMAS clinical staff leaders graduated from UC San Diego's Lean Healthcare curriculum and received a Green Belt designation. The course offered tools on process improvements toward patient care, clinical workflows, and resource management. Over the 2- month course timeline, the team created some excellent projects that made an immediate clinical impact. Each of these projects required a great amount of effort and a multi-disciplinary approach. Here are some of the attendees and their projects:

• Mary Fisher: Patient Parking Optimization (potential savings to the Department of ~$150K)
• Diane Pimenta: Chart Check Compliance (revised workflow for weekly QA checks, increased completion rate from 30 to 80%!)
• Jennifer Murray: Registration Clean Up (workflow improvements to spot and significantly reduce registration errors)
• Sherita Tate: AlignRT Charge Capture (creating a workflow for a new charge capture in La Jolla)
• Ryan Mosher: SRS AlignRT Imports (significant improvements to process wait times and delays)
• Mariel Cornell: Streamlining Breast Tx Plans (drastically reducing window from Rx to plan completion)
• Matthew Taylor: Overtime Reduction (clinical coverage strategies to eliminate need for OT)
  

Mary Fisher and our La Jolla Front Desk team tackled another great process improvement project this last month. In September, the team started looking at copay collection rates. Through a variety of process changes and bringing attention to the workflow, the team was able to quickly achieve their 70% collection target. For the last 2 months, we have a collection rate over 85%! Great job to the team (Linda Evans, Marcela Fierro, Maria Gonzales, Diana Gutierrez, Bertha Morales, and Stacey Berry).