Lean Six Sigma quality improvement approach to implement clinical practice guidelines for prescribing opiates for chronic pain in a primary care setting

Background Implementing guidelines for chronic opioid management during a clinic merger posed significant challenges. Our aim was to increase the percentage of chronic pain evaluations and urine toxicology tests in patients on chronic opioid therapy from the baseline rate of less than 20% to 50% within 1 year at an academic, primary care clinic.Methods We applied the Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control (DMAIC) approach of Lean Six Sigma for this quality improvement (QI) project. The QI tools included the creation of stakeholder mapping, root cause analysis, process flow mapping and a driver diagram. Lack of patient and provider education emerged as a significant barrier. The outcome measures were percentage of chronic pain evaluations and urine drug toxicology with an increase in controlled substance agreement completion rates as our process measures. Major interventions included patient and provider education, leveraging health information technology, care coordination and implementing new clinic protocols. Data analysis was performed by monthly run charts. Descriptive statistics were used to summarise clinical variables, while χ2 analyses were employed to determine statistically significant differences between preintervention and postintervention measures.Results We observed an increase in completion rates of clinic visits for chronic pain, rising from 19.0% to 51.9% (p