Our company’s primary focus is to help clients develop
healthy patient and staff relationships. Our consulting
services are customized to your organization, and your specific needs.
Areas of expertise include customer service, organizational
communications and employee relations.
A. Woodward & Associates was established in 1999 by Anita B. Woodward,
MBA, CHE. Based in Cleveland, Ohio, we also have clients on both the
West and East coasts. Anita has over 20 years of healthcare management,
customer service, and human resource experience.
October 2006 Newsletter
Patient Service Mapping: A Technique to Improve Satisfaction
Patient Service Mapping is a tool to use with your staff when you want to involve them in improving the patient's experience. This tool helps staff evaluate the patient's experience through the eyes of the patient, and then determine how to improve that experience in ways that will increase the patient's satisfaction. For more information on how to use Patient Service Mapping, please contact us by email.
Patient Service Mapping is a tool that can help you identify service gaps and opportunities for improvement in your patients' experiences. This tool can be used for any type of patient encounter. (It can even be used to improve the experiences of internal customers!)
There are four main steps in this process:
- Identify the steps in the patient's experience
- Identify service gaps
- Identify opportunities to improve
- Implement changes
| Step 1: Identify the steps in the patient's experience |
|---|
| Involve front
line staff in this process. Ask them to list the steps in the
patient's experience with your department. Be sure to start with
the patient's very first contact with your organization. That
contact may occur by phone or email. The hard part of this step is helping staff to identify the steps as the patient experiences them, not as the staff does. For instance, if a person sees that a mole on his arm seems to be growing, he might want to have it checked. A map of his experience might look like this:
Each of the above steps can probably be broken down into sub-steps, and staff should be encouraged to identify those, thinking about how the patient experiences them. |
| Step 2: Identify service gaps |
|---|
| Next, staff
should identify service gaps at each step. An ideal way to do
this is to interview patients, either individually or in Focus
Groups. The patient is in the best position to discuss each step
in the process, and to give feedback about where he or she was
uncomfortable, frightened, annoyed or bewildered. If patient interviews are not possible, have staff put their “patient hats” on and discuss each step from the patient’s perspective. For instance, when the patient calls the office number, what does s/he hear – a voicemail tree, a busy signal, a human being? Are the words in that greeting warm and welcoming? Is it impossible to get to a human being? Are the voicemail instructions complicated? For each step in the patient map, identify gaps the patient may experience. Pay particular attention to “hand-offs,” when the patient is being transferred from one person to another. Hand-offs are often a place where gaps surface, as each person thinks the other has taken responsibility for needed communication or behaviors. |
| Step 3: Identify opportunities to improve |
|---|
| Once the gaps
are identified, devise ways to close those gaps. Patient
feedback such as survey results or complaint data can be used to
prioritize improvement opportunities. You can also prioritize
based on perceived impact of the change, or ease of making the
change. You might want to choose one or two easy changes that
will let employees experience a quick success. This will give
them confidence that they can try more complicated improvements
as well. Some tips for making your improvements:
|
| Step 4: Implement changes |
|---|
| Ideally, you
should gather baseline data about the patients’ satisfaction
with the part of the process you will be changing before you
make the changes, and again after, so that you can measure your
success. If that is not possible, decide ahead of time how you
will know whether your changes have been successful or not. Don’t be afraid to fail. If the first change is not successful, encourage your staff to come up with a different approach. Always keep the patient’s perspective at the forefront of your plans. Celebrate successes! Each success will build confidence and commitment to do even more in the minds of your staff. Your patients will thank you for it! |
If you would like additional details or assistance
with Patient Service Mapping please
contact us. We can help your department, or your large organization,
implement this tool in every department, even those that do not give
direct patient care.
HCAHPS Update – Participation May Affect Medicare Payments
National implementation of HCAHPS (Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers & Systems) is beginning this month, with the first public report scheduled to be released in June, 2007. That report will cover the first nine months of data collected from hospital patients nationwide. HCAHPS is a series of patient satisfaction questions that are being asked of all hospitals who have agreed to participate. (See the April, 2006 issue of this newsletter for more information. Go to our web site and click on News and Events to find the archived newsletters.)
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has recently proposed that payment rates be reduced by 2% for any hospital not participating. They are suggesting that this reduction take place in 2008.
If you want more information about HCAHPS, please contact us by email or go to directly to the web site of the US Dept of Health and Human Services for more information (links directly to the relevant web page).
Woodward to Speak at ACHE Congress
Anita Woodward, MBA, CHE, will be speaking at the American College of Healthcare Executives Congress on Healthcare Leadership, to be held March 19-22, 2007, in New Orleans. Please stop by to visit, and let her know how we can make our e-newsletter and our consulting services more useful to you. Go to www.ache.org for more information.
Real Life Customer Service Case
The following situation really occurred. Consider using it as a case
for quick discussions in staff meetings.
A visitor was leaving a large, urban teaching hospital. As she reached
the parking attendant and gave him her ticket, she asked directions to a
major highway nearby. The parking attendant shrugged his shoulders and
said “I don’t know how to get there.” Shocked, and unwilling to accept
this was really his answer, she responded “You really don’t have any
idea how I should go?” The attendant merely shrugged his shoulders.
During the entire exchange, he did not even look at the driver.
- How would this question be handled at your hospital?
- What impact might this exchange have on a visitor leaving your facility?
- Does it matter if the parking services are contracted out and this is not actually a hospital employee?
- What questions do your customers ask in your work area? How well-equipped are front line staff to answer those questions?
Let us know if you find this newsletter helpful. If you have a case study you would like us to include, or if there are certain topics you would like to see addressed, please email us.
About This Newsletter
This newsletter is published for clients and colleagues of A.
Woodward & Associates, and for others who are interested in customer
service, employee relations, and organizational communication,
especially in healthcare organizations.
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