Patient Care Strategy

Situation

A well-regarded regional hospital built a new maternity wing and needed to fill it with patients. Unfortunately, the administration had seen patient satisfaction survey scores and in-hospital births decline for a number of months.

Patients, care providers, nurses, and business staff all recognized that patient satisfaction had been declining, despite the highly regarded quality of care. The everyday experience in the office was chaotic. Commonly, one could find both a crowded, noisy waiting room and providers asking "where are my patients?"

Patients cited a negative visit experience and difficulty getting appointments as causes for frequent cancellations, walk-outs, and transfers to other practices. Providers and staff strained to ease patients' (and their own) frustrations. Everyone agreed the situation needed to change, and the hospital's strategic plan hinged upon a full maternity ward to grow the patient base.

Complications

Achieving alignment between the different groups of stakeholders in the office was nearly impossible, because each person had a different opinion on what caused delays and scheduling problems. By collecting detailed opportunity data, the team was able to prioritize specific causes for decreased patient satisfaction. Tracking patient experience times through the office differentiated between frequently occurring delays and isolated events.

Results

Business staff began scheduling appointments to reflect actual processing time, reducing "spikes" during the busiest hours. The team improved communication between the staff and with the patients, proactively reducing delays and providing more personal interaction. Brief, hourly performance reviews kept the entire office focused on visible results and action-oriented.

In the first five weeks, the team cut the number of patients waiting more than 30 minutes in half and reduced average waiting time by 18%, with no decrease in daily office volume. Early returns of standard patient surveys show the highest scores in 12 months for both overall patient satisfaction and satisfaction with the office visit.

The leadership team has started regular reviews of key data to assign corrective actions. Next steps to level the provider schedule further and address delays that cause waiting in the exam room will generate further improvement.