Patient Safety & Quality Improvement USMLE Step 1 Practice Question
A quality improvement team uses a Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycle to reduce patient wait times in an outpatient clinic. In the Plan phase, they hypothesize that staggering appointment times by 10 minutes will reduce average wait times. In the Do phase, they implement staggered scheduling for one week. In the Study phase, they find that average wait time decreased from 35 minutes to 22 minutes. Which of the following is the most appropriate next action in the Act phase?
Answer choices
- AAdopt the change on a broader scale while continuing to monitor outcomesCorrect answer
- BReturn to the original scheduling system and plan a larger study
- CRepeat the PDSA cycle with a different intervention to further reduce wait times
- DImplement staggered scheduling permanently across all clinic locations
- EPublish the results in a peer-reviewed journal
- FImmediate full-scale permanent implementation bypassing PDSA iteration
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