Using the PPM project work to track Quality Improvement work at a Hospital

[TPigeon]

Does anyone else out there use ServiceNow PPM and the projects module to track quality improvement work with all the normal SPC charts, PDSA or Key driver diagrams?  I am trying to make sure this works for that type of QI work and would love to hear how some others might use it. 

[Manville]

Hello, Industrial engineer here. Former healthcare system engineer.

As of now, there is no application specifically for healthcare improvement projects in servicenow. There is also no platform support for SPC, PDSA, Key driver, regression analysis, decision trees, etc. I've been using a jupyter notebook to do those kinds of analyses on platform data.

That said, if you're just looking to run a project, track & assign interdependent tasks, you can do that. Innovation management can be a good tool for collecting opportunities for quality improvement, eliminate low value ideas, group duplicate ideas, etc.

demand management can then be used for a cursory analysis to determine viability, prioritization, and determine when it could be done and what resources would  be required & available.

Project management could then be transitioned into a standard project from a project template. map process, collect data, establish baseline & control limits, integration SPC chart into an area, create a fishbone diagram of common root causes and how to identify & remediate them them.

But tracking their metrics continuously, so you can measure the continued impact of new projects on existing metrics?  You can track external data, but they don't have any of the tools for analysis. Its an incredibly sad fact since SPC charts would be AMAZING on incident or request data: https://docs.servicenow.com/en-US/bundle/vancouver-now-intelligence/page/use/performance-analytics/c...

That said, SN is pushing really hard on the healthcare space, and this could be another valuable area for it. When I was doing these projects, we were pretty much exclusively: excel, powerpoint, word, matlab, and outlook.  which was pretty sad.

So, in summation: No, but some of the parts are there!

[TPigeon]

Thanks for the reply. Yeah, they want to do QI work and then be able to track it for 8 months to see if there is actual improvement in the QI work. They also want to say hey, this metric went up in this month what projects do we have related to this key metric we track in the HealthCare system. I think I might be able to achieve that with the goals piece and Strategic Management, but not everything they want.

[Manville]

yeah the goal framework might be a good solution for that: https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/vancouver-it-business-management/page/product/goal-framework/conc...

specifically, the goal framework for SPM: https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/vancouver-it-business-management/page/product/goal-framework/conc...

but implementing those advanced analytics? it would be a development slog to do it. 

BUT if you had the analytics/visualization in another tool. and were able to bring in those metrics into the ServiceNow goal framework, through PA or whatever, you could build a bridge between the metrics and the work. You could extend the goals tables to get the fields you need. 

The challenge will be making sure you have solid foundational data for the metrics. Say one of the metrics is HAI (hospital acquired infections) you'd want a reliable breakdowns: hospital, unit, infection type, etc. you might get into some sensitive data stuff. I don't know what the PHI rules in the UK are, but it could get messy

honestly, I would skip the 8 month requirement and expect them to track it forever. Thats basically what the auditors will eventually want anyways.

I think its very doable. If you want someone to discuss it with. I'd be happy to. QI projects/Healthcare System Engineers have needed a robust tool for tracking their work FOREVER. It would be a fascinating project