Question

One of the Baldrige Core Values is Patient-Focused Excellence. The description on pages 40-41 of the Baldrige Excellence Framework document suggests numerous activities on which an excellent organization should focus to achieve patient-focused excellence, which I have extracted below (many of these ideas are reflected in the Criteria questions for Category 3):

Concept 1…your organization must consider all features and characteristics of patient care delivery (including those not directly related to medical, clinical, and health services) and all modes of customer access and support that contribute value to your patients and other customers.

Concept 2 Patient-focused excellence has both current and future components: understanding the desires of patients and other customers today and anticipating future desires and health care marketplace potential.

Concept 3 Many factors may influence value and satisfaction over the course of your patients’ and other customers’ experience with your organization. Primary among these factors is the degree of patient safety throughout the health care delivery process. An additional factor is your organization’s management of patient and other customer relationships, which helps build trust, confidence, and loyalty. Additional factors include the availability of clear information on likely health and functional status outcomes, the responsiveness of health care providers and ancillary staff members, cost, and the quality and availability of continuing care. For many patients, an important factor is the ability to participate in decisions about their health care.

Concept 4 Patient-focused excellence means much more than reducing errors, merely meeting accreditation specifications, or reducing complaints. Nevertheless, these factors contribute to your patients’ and other customers’ view of your organization and thus are also important parts of patient-focused excellence.

Concept 5 A patient-focused organization addresses not only the health care service characteristics that meet basic patient and other customer requirements but also those unique features and characteristics that differentiate the organization from its competitors. This differentiation may be based on innovative health care service offerings, combinations of health care service offerings, price, customized offerings, multiple access and outward communication mechanisms, time to appointment, rapid response, innovative patient conveniences (e.g., valet parking, gourmet menus, or hotel accommodations), or special relationships.

Concept 6 [Patient-focused Excellence] demands constant sensitivity to changing and emerging patient, other customer, and market requirements and to the factors that drive customer engagement. It demands close attention to the voice of the customer. It demands anticipating changes in the marketplace.

Your assignment is to assess how well the practices and activities in your current organization (or a recent one that you worked for) reflect these principles of patient-focused excellence, and also identify what opportunities may exist in the organization to improve their focus on these principles. In other words, think of adding a “How” before each of these principles and recasting them as questions; e.g. “How does …your organization consider all features and characteristics of patient care delivery (including those not directly related to medical, clinical, and health services) and all modes of customer access and support that contribute value to your patients and other customers?” and so on.   Provide examples of effective practices that you have seen; and suggest specific improvements (based on the readings and Baldrige Criteria) that can help the organization. You may have to talk with others in your organization to gather useful information. If you have not worked in the health care field, interview someone who does and who can respond for his or her organization.  Organize and format your response to clearly address each of these six concepts.

Answer 1

Concept 1…your organization must consider all features and characteristics of patient care delivery (including those not directly related to medical, clinical, and health services) and all modes of customer access and support that contribute value to your patients and other customers.

The characteristics of patient care delivery determine the quality of services provided to the patients and stakeholders. In my organization, care is based on human relationships. Our hospital belief in the relationship based care system. The effective relationship with patients, families and communities, the relationship with self, the relationship with colleagues and the relationship with our diverse communities and worlds determines our care pattern.

Concept 2 Patient-focused excellence has both current and future components: understanding the desires of patients and other customers today and anticipating future desires and healthcare marketplace potential.

A better understanding of the patients and other customers desires helps to determine the future needs and plan accordingly. The patient's demands are well understood by the organization and all the possible measures are done to improve their satisfaction. Need assessments are done to assess the requirements and the functional planning is done based on the assessed needs. This will help to improve quality of care and improves their satisfaction.

Concept 3 Many factors may influence value and satisfaction over the course of your patients’ and other customers’ experience with your organization. Primary among these factors is the degree of patient safety throughout the healthcare delivery process. An additional factor is your organization’s management of the patient and other customer relationships, which helps build trust, confidence, and loyalty. Additional factors include the availability of clear information on likely health and functional status outcomes, the responsiveness of health care providers and ancillary staff members, cost, and the quality and availability of continuing care. For many patients, an important factor is the ability to participate in decisions about their health care.

To improve the patient satisfaction our organizations has many strategies. As an accountable care organization, my hospital has concentrated on even the minor aspects of care and consistent with the plan.

The activities are :

Call out patient’s name and letting them call the personnel by name- wearing a name tag helps it.

Making eye contact with the patient while interacting with them.

Spending time on patient education.

Ensuring adequate cleanliness of the hospital.

Improved hospital atmosphere to provide utmost comfort.

Better systems to limit wait times and improve accessibility.

Personalized care to improve the patient experience.

Supporting services like :

Electronic Medical Record (EMR)

Prescription Fulfillment

Patient Advocate

Clergy

Personal Care

Valet

Housekeeping

Food Service

Concept 4 Patient-focused excellence means much more than reducing errors, merely meeting accreditation specifications, or reducing complaints. Nevertheless, these factors contribute to your patients’ and other customers’ view of your organization and thus are also important parts of patient-focused excellence.

Our organization concentrates mainly on three aspects for improved patient satisfaction:

Personal attention to the patient

Setting goals and planning accordingly

Accountability of care

Concept 5 A patient-focused organization addresses not only the healthcare service characteristics that meet basic patient and other customer requirements but also those unique features and characteristics that differentiate the organization from its competitors. This differentiation may be based on innovative healthcare service offerings, combinations of health care service offerings, price, customized offerings, multiple access and outward communication mechanisms, time to the appointment, rapid response, innovative patient conveniences (e.g., valet parking, gourmet menus, or hotel accommodations), or special relationships.

To aid the patient satisfaction the organization has cost-effective high-quality care.

Effective patient management system to reduce the wait times and improve the timely availability of care.

Insurance tie-ups to manage the needs of the clients.

Competent health care personnel’s to provide efficient care.

Patient convenience facilities like valet parking, comfortable accommodation and individualized menu facility.

Concept 6 [Patient-focused Excellence] demands constant sensitivity to changing and emerging patient, another customer, and market requirements and to the factors that drive customer engagement. It demands close attention to the voice of the customer. It demands to anticipate changes in the marketplace.

Our organization conducts period surveys and audits to assess the needs and improvement.

The organizational review and planning process has based on the needs and evaluation.

Involvement of the patient, family and community in the planning process along with other experts allows the need-based planning.