O2107: A Quality Improvement Initiative to Improve Productivity Reporting by Pediatric Transport Team Members: Overcoming Barriers, Perceptions and Duplicate Work

Purpose/Objectives: With rising healthcare costs, healthcare worker performance and productivity face increased scrutiny. Transport team members face unique challenges documenting productivity when not on transport or assigned to hospital patient care. With the decrease in local neonatal and pediatric transports during the pandemic, our transport team members provided more assistance with hospital bedside care, procedures, delivery room and code blue resuscitations. However, processes in place to capture productivity (procedure log, transport log, daily productivity report sheet) were felt to be unsatisfactory.
In January 2022, a brief informal attitudes and practice survey of the transport team members revealed that 0% of team members were satisfied with the current processes in place to track productivity. Only 60% of responders were likely to record their productivity for every shift in the past month and 60% reported spending at least 10 min (or more) on average reporting their productivity per shift.
We aim to increase productivity reporting by transport team members by 20% within the next 12 months by implementing a new process. A secondary goal is to improve transport team satisfaction and efficiency with productivity reporting process.

Design/Methods: A multidisciplinary team (RN, MD, management) reviewed the productivity reporting practice already in place and survey results. Process mapping of the current system identified barriers to accurate and efficient productivity documentation, providing opportunities to streamline the process. A novel tool named Patient Care and Professional Development (PCPD) Log was created to capture transports, bedside care, procedures, and continuing education, while minimizing the redundancy of handwritten logs and reports. The tool and revised process for reporting productivity were introduced to the Transport Team in January 2022. Monthly team meetings provide opportunities to share results, gather feedback, and modify the reporting tool and process (= Plan-do-study-act cycles).

Results: Preliminary data are reported from January – November 2021 (pre-intervention) and January – March 2022 (post-intervention). There is a 68% increase in the average number of productivity events per month between the two time periods reported by the transport team members (Figure 1). Large gains were seen in reporting of resuscitation attendance (high-risk delivery, code blue and trauma), vascular access, respiratory related procedures, and bedside patient care (Figure 2). However, a concurrent decrease in professional development reporting was noted.

Conclusion/Discussion: Our early data show improved productivity reporting by transport team members, exceeding our initial goal of 20%. The PCPD Log continues to evolve as feedback is provided by team members. A repeat team member survey is anticipated for Summer 2022 to measure satisfaction with the new process and tool. Future directions include ongoing monitoring to sustain higher levels of reporting, assigning time values to common procedures and the addition of more respiratory therapist specific patient care and procedures.