Patient Experience Journal (Nov 2020)
The use of organizational assessments in improving patient and staff experiences in the ambulatory care setting
Abstract
As the needs of patients evolve, healthcare organizations must diversify their approach to improving patient experience. Their programs should encompass the medical, mental, spiritual, and emotional needs of patients and their family members and the staff who care for patients. This case study examines the results of the evaluation to assess the effectiveness of organizational patient experience efforts. The Beryl Institute’s Experience Assessment was the evaluation tool administered and revealed the areas in which the organization was performing well and where improvements were needed. In collaboration with Ambulatory Care and Finance, the Office of Patient Experience targeted the Adult Primary Care and Orthopedic outpatient clinics for this assessment and followed-up with improvement projects to address the areas of opportunities identified. We administered the Extended DiSC® Assessment to the leaders in all departments that function within Ambulatory Care, to support the success of the improvement projects. The DiSC® assessment enables each leader to understand their communication style and gain an understanding of the ways they could improve communication with the leaders they collaborated with, who have different communication styles. Both assessments are geared towards self-examination and prodded the organization towards taking an honest look at how they functioned collectively and on an individual level and helped to clarify their perspective and reiterate their core values as a patient experience organization. The use of the Experience Assessment enabled an objective evaluation of the team’s readiness for patient experience improvements, in conjunction with the insights gleaned from the Extended DiSC® assessment. Experience Framework This article is associated with the Staff & Provider Engagement lens of The Beryl Institute Experience Framework. (http://bit.ly/ExperienceFramework) Access other PXJ articles related to this lens. Access other resources related to this lens.
