Stress-test a wound care backlog by proving that each hold window and restore rule can place unanswered wound visits inside the planned lane, survive override pressure, and avoid trapping wound teams inside a green backlog slide that hides long-lived soft holds.
Wound care backlogs often list a clinic checklist while leaving restore behavior, override authority, and abort ownership implicit. Those edges decide whether a late dressing change stays inside the wound packet or leaves a broken follow-up path live under peak volume. The exercise should follow actual backlog inventories, clinic maps, and escalation paths rather than a clean quality deck.
Inventory the backlog lanes
List every wound visit class with its response window, waive rule, override behavior, owners, and notification channels. Mark paths that cannot reverse without a manual amendment. Attach the last three wound care backlog incidents with raw timelines and any waivers. Include the source of truth for open visit counts during the observation window.
Name detect, hold, divert, abort, and restore owners with exit conditions. Write the point after which a stuck visit would require a different procedure, then review whether that action is still permitted. Capture maximum acceptable dwell in measurable units, including which modalities are excluded from the backlog path and why.
Backlog drills to time on purpose
- A minority wound bay keeps a side-channel while the aggregate backlog dashboard stays green.
- A restore has already left a wound nurse without a trusted visit state.
- The primary wound dashboard lags beyond the planned observation window.
- An operator skips a visit gate because a clinic cutoff is near.
- Automated and human divert messages collide under the new backlog rule.
For each drill, identify detection time, clinic impact, containment, and the authority to force a wound care backlog rollback. Require commands and dashboard links in the runbook.
Close the backlog with named owners
Run the package in Pingpong with wound ops, nursing, therapy, and quality seats. Ask wound ops which patient decision becomes unsafe first if visits still stick after the claimed window. Ask nursing whether macros can absorb a forced override. Ask owners to show the exact backlog version or export used as the exit condition.
Related reviews include a therapy minute target, the LTACH ops lead seat, a same-day discharge rule, and a staffing ratio cut stress test. Browse the war-game decisions hub for adjacent controls.
Authorize the published backlog path only after a timed drill restores usable hold hygiene inside the documented budget without an undocumented manual step.