With a focus on improving overall patient satisfaction, a Transitional Care Unit (TCU) in a long- term care facility has used TruthPoint to gather patient experience feedback since 2012. The TCU team collects feedback from patients four days post-admission, and again shortly before discharge from the unit.
The multi-point collection process allows the team to address patient experience in two ways:
- Four days post-admit: Team members quickly understand and address any unmet needs, questions, or concerns the patient has while they begin to acclimate to the unit. It provides a meaningful touchpoint with each individual, and a venue for them to request any additional information or support. Information gathered is used for immediate service recovery, individual care planning, and daily interdisciplinary accountability huddles.
- Pre-discharge: Team members seek to better understand and address any potential gaps or needs related to discharge planning and education, as well as provide a more holistic view of process or systemic opportunities. Collecting feedback from the patient’s perspective delivers leaders a highly relevant real-time view of the care environment that can be used to inform process improvement initiatives.
Working with their TruthPoint Performance Improvement Coach, the TCU team has hardwired a daily interdisciplinary huddle that brings together a team of department and service leads to help understand, triage, and address patient needs. Using On-Purpose reporting provided by TruthPoint, the team reviews all patient feedback collected the day prior, assigns follow-up service support to the necessary departments, and efficiently keeps a pulse on day-to-day patient experience.
This process allowed the team to quickly learn that bringing together a cross-functional group allowed each team member to gain a holistic view of each patient’s experience.
Outcomes: Implementing the daily interdisciplinary huddle, paired with real-time patient insights delivered by TruthPoint and dedicated teamwork, the TCU team has achieved and maintained outstanding improvements in organizational target measures, including:
- Increased top-box score for “I would recommend to others” by 38%
- Increased top-box score for “The staff was kind to me” by 31%
- Increased top-box score for “The staff knows my needs and preferences” by 56%
- Increased top-box score for “My Expectations were met” by 41%
Building daily accountability for patient experience has shifted staff perception to see patient feedback as “opportunities to improve” versus “leadership oversight,” and staff are highly involved in brainstorming solutions. Front-line staff have taken greater ownership for resolving patient needs, in turn reducing the need for leadership intervention. Not only are they able to address patient needs more quickly, but the volume of patient grievances is trending downward as the daily huddle process matures.
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