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Abstract Introduction Nationwide Children’s hospital (NCH) Sleep Center mission is to improve overall health through increased access to diagnosis of sleep disorders. Timely sleep study reporting avoids delay in recognition of sleep disorders and enables early intervention. NCH Sleep center providers completes urgent sleep study interpretations within 24 hours. Delay in sleep study interpretation of non-urgent sleep studies has been a patient and referring provider dissatisfier. Methods Aim Statement: The project will decrease the time to interpretation of non-urgent sleep studies for outpatient NCH ENT referrals from a baseline of 11 days to a goal of 7 days, accomplished by June 30 th, 2023, and sustained for 1 year. Key Drivers: • Provider workload • Provider expectation • Scoring delay • Workflow technical issues Interventions: • Change provider sleep reading rotation to 1 week • Study number/provider capped to 25/week • Study allocation criteria established • Report templates streamlined • Scoring for weekend studies implemented • Request platform for workflow management Results A total of 270 children were referred by NCH ENT and underwent non-urgent overnight polysomnograms from January 2023 to July 2023 as compared to 180 children from January 2022 to July 2022. The time to interpretation of non-urgent studies ordered by ENT specialists reduced from an average of 11 days (SD 7.1 days) in 2022 to an average of 4.5 days (SD 3.3 days) in 2023 (Jan-June). Conclusion Our results indicate that process improvement in the pediatric sleep lab using quality improvement methodology can be utilized to improve patient experience and meet referring provider expectations. Support (if any)
Karhoff et al. (Sat,) studied this question.