Carol Campbell spent more than 20 years at the Walt Disney Co. and Delta Air Lines before joining Ascension in 2022. Her background in consumer experience helped launch the system's listening approach to capture real-time patient feedback and drive care improvements.
Ms. Campbell, the St. Louis-based system's chief experience officer, collaborated with Chief Clinical Officer Richard Fogel, MD, last year to incorporate surveys that are sent to patients two hours post-clinical visit or 24 hours after they are discharged.
The survey asks, "How likely are you to recommend on a scale from 1 to 10?" If someone chooses a six or lower, the facility leader receives a notification and a team member calls the patient to understand what went wrong.
"We recover it in the moment, but then there's also an added responsibility to get to the root cause and try to resolve it," Ms. Campbell told Becker's. "It's reinforcing a culture of continuous improvement but doing it directly through the voice of our patients."
Because of the simplicity of the survey, it is easy to compare feedback across service lines, Ms. Campbell said. Physicians are also able to look at their own ratings and the verbatim feedback from patients, as well as how they are scoring compared to colleagues.
A year later, Ascension has seen progress in the growth of the top line net promoter score and a decrease in safety-related issues, Ms. Campbell said. The system is also looking to implement the capability to ask patients if they understood their care plans when they left with a simple yes or no question. If anyone says no, a clinician would call them back to make sure they are better informed.
"With the opportunity to recover fast and well from a problem and try to get it clarified, we are seeing a decrease in some of those longer term, more formal complaints or grievances," Ms. Campbell said.
The system is also looking to use the technology to survey its nursing staff to see what they need in terms of support for their roles, she added.
Ascension was one of 16 systems recognized at a Sept. 17 patient safety forum at the White House. Over the last three years, the system has seen more than a 30% reduction in the time it takes for a patient to enter the emergency department to when they see a provider, Dr. Fogel said. The system has also seen an increase in patient experience and safety scores.
"We've got a tremendous opportunity to really improve safety, improve the quality of care, and we're really leaning into that because it's part of our mission and it's the right thing to do," Dr. Fogel said.