Leveraging Technology to Increase Patient Satisfaction and Employee Engagement

Leveraging Technology to
Increase Patient Satisfaction
and Employee Engagement

© 2018 Health Catalyst
Proprietary. Feel free to share but we would appreciate a Health Catalyst citation.
Patient Satisfaction and Employee Engagement
This report is based on a 2018 Healthcare Analytics Summit presentation
given by Amy Triola, Director of Patient Satisfaction, Wolff Center at
UPMC, and Jody Madala, MPA, Senior Product Manager, UPMC
Enterprises entitled, “Proactive Patient and Leadership Engagement
Delivers an Improved Care Experience.”

Healthcare is a thriving industry, but its
constant evolution has many healthcare
organizations in flux.
Faced with challenges, such as mergers
and acquisitions, legal mandates, and
changing patient populations, health
systems struggle to maintain patient
satisfaction and keep employees and
leadership happy and engaged.
With some reimbursements tied to
performance, including patient satisfaction
ratings, organizations must improve patient
satisfaction or take a hit to their bottom line.

Making improvements requires creating a
culture that focuses not only patient satisfaction,
but also employee satisfaction and engagement.
While there’s no magic elixir that boosts
HCAHPS scores, healthcare organizations are
leveraging technology and data to modernize
work already being done.
This includes building consistency into
workflows, increasing transparency across the
organization, and driving culture change that
improves patient care, and in turn, increases
patient satisfaction.

Change initiatives flounder when organizations
aren’t culturally ready for them.
Any organization has the capacity for change
and improvement, but successful quality
improvement initiatives require high-level
alignment about which goals are
important and how to reach them.
Changing the Culture of Care

Focusing on these three action items moves
organizations from goal setting to goal attainment:
Aligning goals throughout the organization.
Building an accountability team.
Leveraging technology and data.
Changing the Culture of Care
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Getting goals aligned is a process.
Answering several questions can help
healthcare organizations home in on goals:
What is the organizational mission?
What are the core values that will drive the
organization forward?
What do leaders want every patient,
employee, physician, and community
member to feel and experience when
they interact with the organization?
Aligning Goals
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The answers provide leadership with a
framework for culture change and
improvement initiatives that sets the
stage for developing strategic goals.
Developing goals that filter down from
executive leadership to the front line staff
requires aligning those goals at the system,
business unit, and department levels.
Aligning Goals

Job descriptions, performance reviews, and
individual leader goals should also be aligned.
Every person within an organization should
understand how to thrive in a culture of service
and excellence.
Leadership should ensure staff have
the tools necessary to accomplish
individual and systemwide goals.
Aligning Goals

An accountability team helps organizations
focus on goals and improvement activities.
The first job of an accountability team is to
evaluate goals for alignment with an
organization’s mission and make necessary
adjustments to ensure all goals move the
organization forward.
For example, if the overarching goal is to
improve patient satisfaction, an
accountability team may ask whether
all departmental and individual goals
work together toward that mission.
Building an Accountability Team

Just like improvement work never stops,
accountability must be ongoing. Continual
learning should be an accountability
team’s mantra.
Throughout change initiatives, the team
should evaluate the effectiveness of
different approaches.
And then share best practices across
departments, implement a means to
measure and validate improvement,
and align HR systems and processes
to initiate and sustain culture change.

An important aspect of accountability is
communication.
All leaders should meet regularly with direct
reports, both giving and receiving feedback.
This helps leaders understand what’s going
on with front line staff and how improvement
initiatives are progressing, and it encourages
ongoing accountability.

One way to encourage open communication
is to embed rounding in care processes.
Effective rounding—both at the beside with
patients and with employees—improves
communication and outcomes and manages
patient experiences on the front end by giving
staff the information they need in real time to
meet patient expectations.
The Importance of Rounding

Rounding provides insights into strengths
and weaknesses and patient and
employee perceptions that can inform and
drive quality improvement initiatives.
Rounding also gives leaders information
about lapses in nurse-patient
communication, which highlights where
to focus training and education efforts
that align with departmental and
organizational goals.

Improved rounding leads to improved
communication, which leads to improved
care, which ultimately leads to improved
patient satisfaction.
And technology to improve rounding
is gaining ground in care settings.

Technology often makes healthcare better. This is
true in medical practice (robotic surgery improves
outcomes) and in the business of healthcare delivery
(analytic software helps improve quality).
And many healthcare organizations are
leveraging technology and data, including
rounding technology, to drive culture change.
Leveraging Technology and Data

Choosing the right tools is essential. Rounding
technology should integrate seamlessly into
existing nursing workflows.
If it impedes patient care or consumes too
much of the front line providers’ time, it won’t
be effective.
But with technology that enhances workflow
and improves patient care and outcomes,
leaders can build a proactive and
accountable patient care environment and
bolster teamwork throughout the organization.
Leveraging Technology and Data

Web-based survey tools for phones, tablets,
and other hand-held electronic devices used
during rounding drive culture change through
customized and simplified patient engagement
and enable personalized, compassionate care
at every step in the patient journey.
Rounding technology also enables a
standardized approach to rounding so
questions to patients are consistent.
Enhanced Rounding with Web-Based Survey Tools

Specifically, rounding solutions put plans of
care, bedside shift reports, and whiteboard
compliance information into one place where
it’s easy to access.
These solutions provide a way to efficiently
evaluate nurse-patient communication and
leverage patient provided information to
measure performance, encourage account-
ability, and align engagement efforts and
quality initiatives.
Enhanced Rounding with Web-Based Survey Tools

For rounding tools to work effectively, staff
must be able to use the tool and understand
the data generated.
A rounding tool dashboard displays data
gathered from the rounding tool and
elsewhere—both within and outside
of the organization.
The data that fuels the dashboard allows
staff to see work and progress in near
real time and provides benchmarking
information so staff can compare their
outcomes both internally and externally.
Rounding Tool Dashboard

Organizations can customize dashboards to
provide only the data needed to improve care.
Dashboards can have several tabs, like a
summary page, interview notes, interview
analysis data, rounding activity detail, percent
of patients rounded, and trending keywords.
Each of these tabs contains different
views of data.

For example, as in Figure 1, a trending keywords
page might display chosen keywords, like medication
or pain, and the instances of those keywords.
A line graph on the page might display
how the keywords have trended over
time, giving insight into patient care
and satisfaction in specific areas,
such as pain management.

Figure 1: Sample dashboard page (keyword trends)

A dashboard also aligns rounding
information with other data, such as
costs and quality scores, to show the
impact of rounding over time.
Technology that shares organizational
objectives makes improvement easier.
To be effective, rounding technology
should focus on process innovation to
enhance patient care.
A data fed dashboard fed reports
performance and provides unbiased
accountability and spurs transparency
that drives culture change.

Data driven rounding technology also gives
leaders vital information to measure outcomes
and guide change.
Creating a discipline around listening and
communicating builds transparency and
accountability into the rounding process.

Rounding isn’t just for patients. Leaders
should also round on employees, truly
listening and seeking feedback.
When employees feel heard and seen,
employee satisfaction improves, and
employees are happier.
Studies show that when employees are
happy, patients are happy.
Happy Employees; Happy Patients

According to a Health Affairs article
published in 2011, environments that
support nurses lead to better care, and an
unhappy work environment can lead to
lower HCAHPS scores.
The first key to successful rounding is
to listen. Patients and employees can
provide vital feedback that improves care.

While rounding technology doesn’t
guarantee happy employees or patients,
it does benefit patients, caregivers,
leaders, and entire organizations.
Bedside rounding technology empowers
patients to maximize their hospital
experience through consistent
interaction with hospital employees.

It provides caregivers access to real-time
census and patient satisfaction data and allows
them to monitor and prioritize patient needs.
It gives leaders insights they need to be
proactive in improving the care environment.

Keeping patients and employees satisfied is a
challenge for all health systems, especially when
organizations are growing and changing, and
when satisfaction wanes, finances take a hit.
To combat this problem, health system
leaders are looking to technology to
enhance their processes and improve
satisfaction and outcomes.
Technology Fuels Better Satisfaction

Technology at its best gives leaders an edge.
Rounding technology supports good
communication and encourages positive
shifts in culture and transparency, and that
boosts both patient and caregiver
engagement and satisfaction.
Embedding this technology into the
rounding process makes rounding more
effective and efficient, which leads to
measurable increases in satisfaction and
puts better HCAHPs scores—and higher
reimbursements—well within reach.
Technology Fuels Better Satisfaction

For more information:
“This book is a fantastic piece of work”
– Robert Lindeman MD, FAAP, Chief Physician Quality Officer

More about this topic
Link to original article for a more in-depth discussion.
Leveraging Technology to Increase Patient Satisfaction and Employee Engagement
How to Integrate Patient Satisfaction Data to Deliver Quality Healthcare and Improve Operational Efficiency
Health Catalyst Success Story
How Care Management Done Right Improves Patient Satisfaction and ROI
Amy Flaster, MD, MBA, Vice President, Population Health Management and Care Management
How to Significantly Reduce Inpatient Admission Times and Improve Patient Satisfaction
Health Catalyst Success Story
10 Motivational Interviewing Strategies for Deeper Patient Engagement in Care Management
KimSu Marder, RN, CCM , Lead Care Manager
Patient Experience Explorer
Health Catalyst Product Overview

Other Clinical Quality Improvement Resources
Click to read additional information at www.healthcatalyst.com
Health Catalyst is a mission-driven data warehousing, analytics and outcomes-improvement company
that helps healthcare organizations of all sizes improve clinical, financial, and operational outcomes
needed to improve population health and accountable care. Our proven enterprise data warehouse
(EDW) and analytics platform helps improve quality, add efficiency and lower costs in support of more
than 65 million patients for organizations ranging from the largest US health system to forward-thinking
physician practices.
Health Catalyst was recently named as the leader in the enterprise healthcare BI market in
improvement by KLAS, and has received numerous best-place-to work awards including Modern
Healthcare in 2013, 2014, and 2015, as well as other recognitions such as “Best Place to work for
Millenials, and a “Best Perks for Women.”

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