When it comes to integrity, billionaire Warren Buffet, chairman and CEO of Omaha, Neb.-based Berkshire Hathaway offers this: “In looking for people to hire, look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if they don’t have the first one, the other two will kill you.”
So what is integrity in health care? For the Radiology division at Children’s Hospital & Medical Center in Omaha, it’s defined as doing the right thing when you’re alone and there’s no one watching. Doing the right thing – putting pediatric patients and their families first; focusing always on safety; and giving families a critical voice in the division’s improvement efforts.
This desire to learn from families and allow them to help lead progress brought Children’s to TruthPoint in July 2015. Since then, the partnership has helped the radiology team achieve dramatic improvement in several key experience metrics for outpatient care.
“Real time feedback with TruthPoint brought a new dimension to our improvement efforts. All of us, from top leadership to front line technologists, could be confident that our families were reflecting more directly on their experience with us in radiology, instead of across the many other service areas they may have encountered that day or week,” says Nicole Hardin, Director of Radiology. “Even today, we can more readily and rapidly apply this insight, see the experience through the family’s eyes, and take ownership of the behaviors and processes reflected.”
TruthPoint performance improvement coach Joel High leads Children’s through an ongoing rapid cycle improvement process including weekly huddles, regular reporting and a frequent evaluation of the assessment itself. Together, the team determines actions – what’s working and what’s not, when to stay the course and when it’s time to move on to the next focus.
Children’s measures success based on an externally administered parent survey. Outpatient radiology’s overall rating increased more than 11 points over the course of 2016. Key driver questions surrounding parent and child preferences, each a focus of the TruthPoint process, also posted positive gains. At the same time, the perception of courtesy and respect increased with a first time, 100-percent score in the 3rd quarter.
“We’re very pleased with these results, and we’re focused on making sure we sustain the momentum through 2017,” says Hardin. “We’ve learned so much from Joel and TruthPoint. It’s exciting to see how far our team has come, and to know that we’re providing our patients with outstanding service and high quality medical care.”