Embracing Patient Feedback

The Children’s Hospital Specialty Team Center currently has 21 specialty clinics being coordinated and operating out of the Specialty Team Center. In a move to increase understanding of how patients perceive services, all Children’s Hospital ambulatory clinics moved to the real-time patient satisfaction platform. This move included the Specialty Team Center, Pediatric Oncology Clinic/Infusion Center, Pediatric Diabetes Center, and Maternal Fetal Medicine Clinic.

Using the Patient Satisfaction Survey Tool-National Research Center (NRC) “Real Time,” and obtaining “real time” patient satisfaction feedback has allowed us to provide immediate service recovery with parents and caregivers, as results are received as soon as three days after the survey is taken. We can better understand what patients need from us, and address service alerts in a timely manner. Instead of receiving a phone call, parents are now emailed or texted a link for the survey. With this new survey platform, feedback is received specific to the specialties and all providers participating in the patient visit (i.e. pediatrician, pulmonologist, RN, social worker, registered dietitian, respiratory care provider). Using this platform, we are now benchmarked against other similar clinics across the country. Additionally, this platform is Magnet compliant and includes Magnet (compliant/benchmarked) questions in the survey.

In another innovation to address patient satisfaction, we developed our “Wildly Important Goal” for fiscal year (FY) 2021-2022. This goal was to increase overall patient satisfaction scores by focusing on courtesy and respect. The team worked on scripting to inject courteous and respectful language into the patient care visit. Staff in the clinic perform a yearly G-R-E-T-E self-assessment, observe a colleague, and discuss with their colleague what they observed. This way, we can be more aware of how we are perceived during patient interactions and work to improve these interactions.

» Greet

» Recognize and introduce

» Explain purpose

» Time: Provide timeframe

» Engage and invite a response