Improving patient experience is not just something that should be done, but it is something that is going to be essential for the future of hospitals and clinics. That said, there is no single, obvious solution to the major challenges in patient experience we have covered previously.
Many organizations are trying to push toward a patient-centric system, however, even basic, foundational tasks such as analyzing current progress has many paths. Kadean Ogilvy-Pinter a Director of Patient Care and Nursing from Wawa, Ontario explains her thoughts on understanding the patient journey:
“I think in terms of understanding what has happened to patients, there’s different tactics that I use in terms of interviewing staff or even going back to the patient to get an understanding. But, I think within our organization we’re still kind of in the infancy of Patient Experience where we have the basic things there, we have the satisfaction surveys.”
1. Overcoming cultural challenges
To overcome cultural obstacles, quality must be given one, collective, shared meaning. By instilling a shared vision and understanding of quality care among employees, facilities have been able to improve their patient experience and safety. Therefore, the initial time spent finding out everyone’s perspectives and then debating them down to one meaning, and imposing that meaning on everyone, really pays off in the long run for the patients.
In addition, if staff are given the opportunity to reflect on the quality of care they provide, they are more likely to see where they can improve it. Petrina McGrath, Vice President of Quality and Inter-professional Practice at Saskatoon Health Region explains how they reflect on the quality of care:
“We look at what does client and family-centered care mean outside of our walls, and also how do we help with those transitions and those transition points there? Our challenge is to continue to make sure we bring patients and families, or residents (if it’s in long term care or clients in home care), to the table, and to have them be part of decision-making at every level of the organization; and we’re seeing that happen. We’re seeing amazing results from that, but you know, we’re challenging the status quo around that, and it requires us to really push our per-conceived assumptions.”
2. Overcoming organisational challenges
To overcome any organisational challenges, it is essential that employees undergo training to focus on patient experience. When it comes to health structures and systems, it is vital that all processes are aligned with the goals of the hospital; to enable change whilst working within the confinements of budget.
Jim Taldudo of Lincor tells us how his company supports this health system alignment:
“So, what we’ll do is take the clinical workstation, put it in the room with the patient and then the nurse is in there, and can just pop the screen over to the patient screen and say “Hey, here’s what we’re doing” and patient satisfaction comes when you’ve got more contact, so we can drive the physicians and the clinicians to the bedside and decentralize healthcare in the clinics.”
3. Overcoming budgetary challenges
To help with the costs of improving patient experience, perhaps different marketing strategies might be useful as well as the introduction of employee reward schemes linked to patient experience. Hospitals and clinics should either be rewarded financially or have money deducted if they fail or succeed in patient experience.
4. Overcoming monitoring challenges
There is little point in collecting statistics and data if nothing is then acted upon.
The organisation and monitoring of communication between healthcare providers and patients should be improved; perhaps implementing an online service would be applicable here.
In addition to this, improvements in attitudes and communication, as well as in the actual environment are vital. Farah Schwartz, Manager of Patient and Family Education at Toronto Rehab, University Health Network said at the last Patient Experience forum
“So, I think some of the key messages from the panel this morning where they talked about what they were doing with patient advisory councils, one of the key things was really, you have to be ready, and you have to be ready and able to engage people, if you bring people into the process and you don’t do what you’re saying you’re going to do, that’s a harmful thing, to engage people in that process and not act on it.”
A few last words on improving patient experience
Hospitals need to be confident and have integrity. A patient needs to know that they are being treated fairly, no matter what they are being treated for, and given constant reassurance and support. There should be an increased opportunity for follow up enquiries, which would help to monitor and analyze the patient experience, and would also help with future improvements of the system. For example, post-discharge phone calls, word of mouth referrals, and quality check outcomes could all be implemented.
For more information on how to overcome challenges in patient-experience, check out the National Forum on Patient Experience West that will be taking place in Vancouver on March 11th – 12th, 2014 – We have gathered the leaders in Patient Centered care that are making the difference to this industry.
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