Using a Data-driven Approach to Improve Interprofessional Teamwork at UChicago Medicine

Background:
Healthcare is rapidly changing and growing more complex, posing a strain on care delivery and frontline providers nationwide. In response, health systems are beginning to recognize clinician engagement in interprofessional teams as an effective strategy to improve care delivery and clinician experience. UChicago Medicine (UCM) has established a committee to align, measure and enhance institutional efforts to engage clinicians in interprofessional, team-based care.

Our aim is to improve care delivery and patient/clinician experience by:
1.) Increasing clinician engagement in interprofessional, team-based care through specific programming;
2.) Creating a data-driven approach to improve interprofessional teamwork.

Methodology:
• Using our annual employee engagement survey data, we mapped physician and staff engagement scores, with a focus on teamwork and communication items, to measure interprofessional collaboration at the unit level.
• We created a heat map to identify those units with the greatest improvements and the greatest opportunities to improve in the last year.
• UCM is piloting programs to improve interprofessional teamwork. Examples include the Clinician Exchange Program for health professionals to shadow each other for CME and safety credit, the AHRQ Team Stepps program, and IGNITE (Improving GME-Nursing Interprofessional Team Experiences), which engages residents and nurses a together in performance improvement activities in unit-based teams.

Results to date: By analyzing pilot program data and employee engagement survey data, we have seen some clear patterns emerge:
• Physicians rated interprofessional teamwork and communication higher than staff in nearly all units. Units that had a lower score difference between physician and staff had better overall scores in a linear relationship.
• Units with active interprofessional pilots in 2017-2018 were more likely to show observable increases in teamwork and communication scores.

Conclusions:
Using employee engagement data is a feasible way to classify units based on interprofessional teamwork effectiveness. Interprofessional teamwork can be improved by participating in interprofessional programs.

Implications:
Our committee will continue advocating for clinician engagement in interprofessional practice and celebrate best practices. We are using this data to offer pilot programs to units with the greatest opportunity to improve and investigating misalignment between physician and staff scores for greater improvement opportunities.