3 minute read
As Injection Volume Increases, Safety Keeps Pace
New and more effective injectable medications have come to market in recent years to treat retinal conditions like macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy. To keep pace with the increasing number of patients who can benefit from these therapies, Kellogg is pursuing new clinical strategies to maintain the highest safety standards for these injections.
“Injections are now the most common in-office procedure in ophthalmology,” says Jennifer Weizer, M.D.
“Yet it’s not a one-size-fits-all process. Patients may require multiple injections, in different formulations and dosages, in one or both eyes, delivered on varying schedules.”
When managing all of those variables in a growing volume of patients, improving efficiency must go handin-hand with the priority of ensuring patient safety. As head of the Kellogg Patient Safety Committee, Dr. Weizer is spearheading efforts to increase dedicated injection capacity and fine-tune the injection protocol in Kellogg’s retina clinics, while prioritizing safety above all else.
In 2024, Dr. Weizer and the committee, including continuous improvement specialist Beth Hansemann, B.A., C.O.T., plus Anjali Shah, M.D., and the Kellogg retina faculty, re-examined every step in the injection process to develop one common, streamlined protocol.
“For example, we’ve analyzed the procedure for preparing injections, putting steps in place to verify that every patient receives the correct medication, delivered into the correct eye,” says Hansemann.
Patient flow within the clinic is also being reimagined to address bottlenecks in the workflow. “The usual process calls for a patient to be seen by a technician in an exam room, then be transferred to an injection room,” Dr. Weizer explains. “If we were equipped to perform exams and injections in the same room, we would streamline each visit for physicians and staff and make it easier for patients, with fewer steps in the flow process.”
Another approach the team is exploring is revamping patient and provider scheduling to cluster injection appointments in a common block of a physician’s clinic time.
Changes like these require adding the specialized injection equipment found in dedicated injection rooms to more exam rooms. “These are costly upgrades, so we are rolling them out in stages,” notes Dr. Weizer. To date five exam rooms are being retrofitted, and the goal is to complete the remaining rooms in the months ahead.
“The goal is to minimize opportunities for confusion and avoid potential safety events,” she continues, “ensuring that, as our vitreoretinal injection volume grows, Kellogg continues to deliver the safest possible patient experience.”
