Luther Midelfort Mayo Health System Case Study

Luther Midelfort Mayo Health System, located in EauClaire, WI, is a non-profit health system led by physicians that include three rural hospitals, a large 220-physician multi-specialty clinic with twelve outpatient locations. This health system, led by a quality-driven leadership team has followed the Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) philosophy to address process issues affecting its various clinics and hospitals. The culture, propagated by the leadership team, is one of collaboration and support as their teams focus on improving patient care. As explained in Edwards,
2018, critical components of the CQI strategy at Luther Midelfort are 1) time is allocated to study and address issues, 2) expert, interdisciplinary teams are utilized of
Luther’s leadership also attributes its’ success from ideas and strategies learned from the Juran Institute and author of Diffusion of Innovations, Everett Rogers.
Quality Improvement Strategies
Plan, Do, Check, Act
The Plan, Do, Check, Act (PDCA) Approach, first developed by W. Edwards Deming, who focused his work on improving work processes. PDCA is also known as the “Deming Wheel” or the
Shewhart Cycle.” First used in manufacturing, PDCA is now broadly applied to many types of work processes in a multitude of industries. The PDCA cycle encourages a commitment to continuous quality improvement by using a four-stage methodology: Plan, Do, Check, Act or PDCA. Luther
Midelfort utilized the PDCA method to explore different solutions to problems, trialing the solutions before selecting the solution to be implemented.
Time to Brainstorm
Author Everett Rogers pointed out that allocating time to the process of brainstorming would actually encourage new thinking. Luther Midelfort subscribed this theory and utilized this
The first team developed the needed quality standard was comprised of clinical staff intimately familiar with a particular area. The second team, comprised of staff with expertise in quality improvement and process redesign,
MBA 655 UNIT 4 ASSIGNMENT 3 effectively took the information developed by the first team and evolved it, through process redesigns the data into a highly reliable system. The first team is then tasked with and takes responsibility for quality control and long-term oversight of the initiative. The article stressed that both types of teams were essential to a successful cycle of continuous quality improvement.
Rapid Measurement and Feedback
Additionally, rapid measurement of quality indicators coupled with timely feedback to staff and the implementation teams, worked well, giving staff a sense of being part of a new, significant effort, provided data on an ongoing basis, and allowed mid-stream corrections to be made if needed.
This meant that patient needs could be addressed continuously, not just discussed after the patient was discharged.
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