Successful integration of standard processes and lean methodologies provide a strong basis for personalized patient care at Wellstar Paulding Hospital, but data-driven excellence requires ongoing evaluation and improvement efforts to maintain and exceed prior performance. With their eye on the Baldrige Award for Healthcare, Wellstar Paulding Hospital knew that their current digital rounding platform was not capable of their envisioned integrations between patient experience survey data and rounding statistics. “Wellstar Paulding Hospital sought a platform that could integrate past patient feedback from satisfaction surveys to make patient concerns and preferences more accessible during the entirety of a patient’s current encounter,” said Evita Payton, Wellstar Paulding Hospital Lean Site Facilitator. There was also a genuine desire to have the leader rounding process become more dynamic and adaptive to the needs of each unit. Furthermore, layering on additional encounters from senior leaders and executives was desired so that the voice of the customer from those specialty rounds was captured. There was an opportunity to overlay this innovative approach on their widely accepted and enculturated foundation of lean management.
As part of the largest health system operating in Georgia, the Wellstar Paulding Hospital team worked with stakeholders at all levels of the organization from the system team down to the frontline leaders and staff to clearly identify the vision and needs for patient experience and rounding across the enterprise. In the summer of 2019, following the transition to NRC Health as their patient experience survey vendor, an interprofessional team was formed to explore options for digital rounding platforms capable of integrating with the NRC data, including ‘real-time’ survey results. The Nobl Rounding Platform became the vendor front-runner after the capabilities of the software and willingness of the Nobl team to work with Wellstar to build this innovative integration became clear.
John Kueven urges systems to “take time to understand the value sought from a rounding platform and how it will align with your key customer requirements and strategic objectives—this will ultimately inform customization meetings with vendor.” Utilization of the pilot provided rounders the chance to validate the effectiveness of the rounding tool within their personal workflow while also proving the ability of the platform to provide data integration and needed reports.
At the unit level, nursing leaders have been able to take the data to the frontline, incorporating it into their lean visual management displayed on the unit. Starr Watson, RN, MSN, Acute and Critical Care Director of Nursing reflects that, “A lot has been learned about leaders updating and giving their patient experience predictions. Now they take the next step to involve the team members in making patient recommendation predictions. They get that continuous feedback to update their board and practices. At the beginning, there was one leader that was at a 20% prediction accuracy. It makes you reflect and you have to talk through it. It allows for that open discussion. Another trend we saw by predicting the patients’ experience is the quiet patients. We found they can be tough to get to their actual experience. We have to ask more questions to get an accurate prediction for those patients.”
The integration of patient experience survey results and real-time leader rounding quantitative and qualitative data
10-point increase in YOY percent positive on patient experience “Would Recommend” inpatient survey question
Achievement of the 2020 Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award
Wellstar Paulding Hospital (WPH) is part of the not-for-profit Wellstar Health System—the largest health system operating in Georgia with over 24,000 team members. WPH’s state-of-the-art hospital consists of 7 floors of 112 acute care beds, 49 emergency rooms, 7 operating rooms, and 12 clinical decision unit beds and two 82,000 sq. ft medical office buildings that provides medical office space for non-WPH owned entities and outpatient departments. WPH maintains over 77% of the Paulding County inpatient market share and aims to “Protect and Grow” its healthcare services within its primary service area. WPH’s performance improvement system is founded upon lean management principles, which encompasses processes for evaluation and improvement of key organizational projects and services. WPH’s cultural motto, “Neighbors Caring for Neighbors” (NCN) also drives the improvement decisions and actions team members take throughout the organization. WPH’s ability to care for and seek immediate and actionable feedback from its neighbors is predicated upon creating an environment that facilitates trust between its customers and team members. WPH’s approach to hear from the voice-of-the-customer is built upon a foundation of reinforced formal and informal processes used to listen, interact with, and observe patients, families, and other customers; one such process is patient leader rounding.
The Beryl Institute is a global community of over 55,000 healthcare professionals and experience champions committed to transforming the human experience in healthcare. As a pioneer and leader of the experience movement and patient experience profession for more than a decade, the Institute offers unparalleled access to unbiased research and proven practices, networking and professional development opportunities and a safe, neutral space to exchange ideas and learn from others. We define the patient experience as the sum of all interactions, shaped by an organization’s culture, that influence patient perceptions across the continuum of care. We believe human experience is grounded in the experiences of patients & families, members of the healthcare workforce and the communities they serve.