Clients and family members are credible and powerful sources of information when trying to understand the quality of care we provide in the Saskatoon Health Region. By having a trained patient advisor actually go and speak to the patients about their experience, we are getting never before seen response rates, and a wealth of meaningful quantitative and qualitative data from which to base our improvement efforts on.
9. Behind the Scenes
• Surveys are faxed to HQC
• Surveys are processed by Teleform (an image recognition
software program)
• HQC analysts run an automated analysis on the survey
responses and create reports
• Within a few days, email indicating we can access survey
results online
• Posted on Neurosciences Visibility Wall
Clients/ customers/ patients/ and family members are credible and powerful sources of information when trying to understand the quality of care we provide in the Saskatoon Health Region
Measuring the Voice of the Customer is a Ministry of Health requirement but more importantly, measuring our client’s experience within Saskatoon Health Region allows us to truly understand the impact of our services.
Measuring client experience allows us to focus our improvement efforts around what matters most to clients and their families. Client experience metrics will also let us know as a health region whether the changes we are making are actually leading to improvements
Evidence shows us that when clients have had a positive experience in hospital, they have better health outcomes, adhere more readily to their treatment plans, and experience lower readmission rates (Glickman et al 2010; Beach et al 2006; Boulding et al 2011; Stewart, 1995).
But the traditional paper-based patient/client experience surveys are burdened by low response rates, and considerable lag times between when the patient is actually asked about their experience to when the results are received. In addition, patient experience surveys often don't allow the health providers to dive into the data and truly understand what the results mean to their unit and front line staff
Neurosciences PFAC
Development of survey – used some of the questions from the NRC Picker acute care survey, and also added some questions that were specific to the neurosciences unit *e.g., whiteboards is a huge concern for our patients and families on the neuro unit because we know they are such an important communication tool, yet they are not be used or updated
Lynett: talk about:
Response rate
That patients appreciate someone to talk to you
That it’s a way for you to give back
That you can connect because you have experience on that unit
That you are a neutral, 3rd party
Survey must be finalized before it is entered into image recognition program, otherwise the automated data entry process become very cumbersome
Advisor capacity – relying on 2 advisors to do the surveys, but sometimes it’s difficult for them to come to the hospital and free up a couple of hours each week to do this.
Used a summer student to assist and also working with an SHR volunteer that is coming up to the unit to also do surveys
Staff engagement. Still early days. Manager left unit and now that role is being covered by 2 other individuals – not always clear who is leading and championing this work and speaking to it at the visibility wall.
Would like to see us get to the point where the results are discussed and there is idea generation on the spot about what can be done to improve the experience / ideas for improvement….staff ownership
The other lesson learned was that we thougtht we needed the data on a weekly basis to understand the experience in real time but this is challenging to get, and truthfully we haven’t made improvements quickly enough to expect to see a change on a weekly basis. So, I actually think monthly data would be fine for the unit level.
Overall this has been a positive experience
Definitely interest in our region to continue to spread
Beginning to work with General Medicine and Renal Services, Humboldt hospital etc
Looking at merging this with the Model Of Care work that is being done in the region
We know this is an exciting time for us because we can help shape what the new provincial acute care survey will look like
Part of a small provincial working group to choose the survey questions and process
Involving patients and families every step of the way to ensure we have a survey that is meaningful to the people we serve and care for in the process