MERCURY ADVISORY GROUP
International Healthcare Management Consultants
CASE STUDY - PROJECT REPORT
Health Travel Coordinator Pilot Program Enhances the Patient Experience at Health Travel Destination Hospital By MARIA K TODD, MHA PHD Introduction and Overview The scope of the project engagement was to develop the role and programming for a “Health Travel Coordinator” position to expedite care when needed, and fill in when gaps occur in the episode of care, in order to improve the health travel patient experience. While health travel to an academic and research hospital is not new, hospitals are now more committed to delivering on promises of brand excellence from stem to stern. This is especially true more recently in the face of measured performance under programs such as HCAHPS® and other quality and customer satisfaction monitoring and evaluation programs required by health regulations and third-party payer performance-based compensation arrangements. Often, hospitals and health systems engage Mercury Advisory Group consultants to develop programs that can enhance coordination of care practices to enhance brand touch points and to negate gaps in service created by multiple hand offs, and to quickly recover from customer service mishaps that can occur along the way. Defining the Health Travel Coordinator’s Role
In order to promote the Ideal Patient Care Experience and to pilot improvements in coordination of care, an academic teaching and research hospital engaged Mercury Advisory Group to created Destination Health Coordinator’s Office to manage and highlight several clinical programs that were above average in coordinating care. These service lines had engaged physicians, and were willing to spend the time and effort to pilot new models for improving the healthcare experience. The Health Travel Program then wanted to pilot an initiative that would coordinate care between multiple departments and produce increased patient satisfaction and higher HCAHPS® scores. Mercury Advisory Group consultants were engaged to create a pilot program for an academic teaching and research hospital that featured a health travel coordinator role. In the pilot program, each arriving health travel patient would remain connected to their assigned coordinator(s) from arrival through departure, and engage at specific touch points along the care path to ensure a seamless and coordinated experience. Touch points were selected based on a previous engagement with Mercury Advisory Group and resulting patient and family feedback and past patient experience mapping data.
Past efforts in Care Coordination Coordination of care efforts were previously tested in many service areas, including, but not limited to primary care, gerontology, cancer centers and even under the U.S. Medicare Demonstration HCAHPS® project, but not under “specialty care models.” The goal was for this position to act as the patient-centered link to all touch points in the episode of care. The objective was to ensure that coordination within the Health System is smooth and seamless for patients and their families and guests as they travel through the multitude of care handoffs within a complex health system at a large academic and research health facility. Pilot Program Development Rather than attempt complicated change management all at once, our client engaged us to develop and execute a strategic pilot program in order to first analyze and measure the amount of coordination of care that would be necessary to successfully scale the program. We suggested that the client include key performance metrics for an activity-based cost analysis so that the feasibility of scaling the program could be analyzed from