Survey participants ranked the following three methods as having the greatest potential in helping healthcare organizations improve patient experience:
- Implementing employee engagement programs that value staff input — 60 percent
- Developing leadership that prioritizes seeing operations from the frontlines — 60 percent
- Employing lean management systems at all levels of the organization, including strategy deployment and cross-functional and daily management — 52 percent
Survey respondents also offered other possible quality improvement solutions to strengthen the patient experience, including:
- Having a universal, cross-continuum health information system that sorts and sends data and information — including real-time to visual management boards for continuous improvement and project status updates — to all those who need it.
- Making the application of some performance excellence criteria such as the Baldrige excellence framework or the Shingo model a requirement for all healthcare organizations.
- Sharing more best practices among staff and with other healthcare organizations.
- Considering patient interests by implementing a “voice of the patient” advisory council.
“Improving and standardizing processes combined with increasing leadership and staff development will help healthcare organizations create more high-value experiences for patients,” said Susan Peiffer, chair-elect of ASQ’s healthcare division and performance improvement specialist for the Western Wisconsin division of the Springfield, Ill.-based Hospital Sisters Health System.
More articles on patient experience:
3 hurdles to achieving patient satisfaction
3 keys to improve the patient experience, lower costs
Carolinas HealthCare selects Influence Health for care management, patient engagement
