The key to driving improved patient experience at healthcare organizations is employee engagement, according to an online ASQ poll of more than 250 healthcare quality leaders.
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