“There is no question that it was worth the wait to have my great granddaughter seen and cared for by such thorough and caring professionals,” wrote a Texas Children’s patient family. “It is obvious why extremely sick children from all over the world are brought to Texas Children’s for treatment.”
This heartfelt sentiment shared by the great grandmother of a 4-month-old child who was treated at Texas Children’s Emergency Center shows how important it is to keep the patient family’s experience at the forefront of everything we do to optimize the compassionate care we provide to patients and their families.
At Texas Children’s, we are doing just that. Due to the tremendous dedication of our employees and staff, the organization exceeded its P3 goal for patient satisfaction in FY16 by five percentile rank points.
While being in the fifty-eighth percentile means Texas Children’s performed better than 58 percent of other leading women’s and children’s hospitals, this percentile is more than just a number. It reflects our commitment to improving the experience for every patient and family who comes to Texas Children’s for care.
“We are consistently collecting feedback from patient families and measuring it against both our past performance and the performance of our peers,” said Texas Children’s Director of Patient and Family Services, Katie Kalenda Daggett. “Improvement initiatives and activities implemented across the system are directly related to feedback received from patient families through the survey.”
The patient satisfaction survey is administered by Press Ganey to patient families at Texas Children’s Medical Center Campus, Texas Children’s Hospital West Campus, Texas Children’s Pavilion for Women and Texas Children’s Hospital The Woodlands. On a scale from 1 to 5, families are asked about their experience from scheduling an appointment to being discharged. This survey also contains a comment section where families provide detailed responses about their experience.
“The richest component in the survey are the comments submitted by our patient families,” said Maggie Weimer, senior project manager of Patient and Family Services. “They pour their hearts out sharing everything from what we did well in to what we could have done differently, and individually recognize staff members who went above and beyond to make their experience an exceptional one.”
Based on Press Ganey survey results, the Patient Experience Team will be focusing on several priority initiatives in FY17, one of which is to improve the elevator experience for patients and families who depend on the Clinical Care Tower elevators to shuttle them to and from their clinic appointments.
“This has been a huge, on-going concern for our patient families,” said Elisa Mozley, assistant director of Patient and Family Services. “We are partnering with Facilities, HR and other teams from across the hospital to develop creative solutions that we can implement to improve the patient experience around elevator use.”
Additional efforts this year will be placed on providing more food options for inpatients at the Medical Center Campus through the MyDining initiative and optimizing employee visibility of the Caught You Caring Program, an organization-wide initiative that has recognized hundreds of employees for their everyday acts of kindness and other “above and beyond” efforts to show they care for Texas Children’s patients.
“We are focusing our patient experience efforts around the concepts of compassion, communication and connectedness,” Daggett said. “Hardwiring these principles into actions throughout the organization will demonstrate to our patients and their families that we put them first, all while working to create a healthier future for children and women.”