Quality Patient Experience Services for
Medical Practices and Ambulatory Care
Wendy Leebov and Associates customizes Quality Patient Experience Services to help medical practices and ambulatory care centers provide a consistently heartwarming, quality patient experience and improve patient satisfaction. We tailor service components to meet each facility’s specific culture and needs.
Read on for examples of:
Option #1: Comprehensive Strategy
Here’s a sample plan for a three-phase strategy to achieve and sustain the Quality Patient Experience in a large multi-site practice.
The Goal: Match the group’s reputation for clinical excellence with a reputation for a great patient experience.
Success Indicators: The CAHPS Survey and individual point-of-service monitoring devices monitor performance and provide individual practices with feedback about their service quality. Wendy Leebov and Associates tailors the approach and tools to align with the CAHPS survey or whichever other survey is used by the practice.
Groundwork- The consultant visits service sites to learn about their leadership, staff, environment, and culture. Includes interviews with key stakeholders, walk-throughs to identify service strengths and needs, and staff and patient focus groups to seek input on the current state and opportunities for improvement.
- The project leader and consultant then clarify the goals of the strategy and devise a plan for presentation to leaders.
Phase 1: Institute GREAT Service
Practices in Everyday Situations
Strategy Kickoff with Leaders: Consultant meets with leaders to:
- Provide an overview of the long-term plan for providing and sustaining the quality patient experience
- Pilot the Core Workshop and invite feedback for fine-tuning before conducting the workshop for all staff in these practices and centers
Great Service Practices in Everyday Situations--
Workshop #1 for everyone:
All providers and office staff attend one of many sessions. (Client chooses whether physicians will be included with other staff or have their own dedicated briefings.) The workshop agenda:- The rationale for elevating the patient experience throughout their services by focusing on reducing patient anxiety through caring communication
- A refresher and trial run of best practices for handling three everyday touchpoints that are part of everyone’s jobs (Greetings, Handoffs and Goodbyes)
- Skill-building on powerful skills (Heart-Head-Heart Communication and Presence) –two skills that help people provide a truly impressive patient experience.
Implementation of Best Practices for Greetings, Handoffs and Goodbyes
- This implementation begins immediately after people attend the workshop. With their internal champions’ support, team members begin implementing GREAT greetings, handoffs and goodbyes specific to their jobs.
- Campaigns to help people build new habits: To support persistent practice and the development of new habits for greetings, handoffs and goodbyes, the project coordinator orchestrates follow-up campaigns provided by Wendy Leebov and Associates to help all of the member practices or centers to master best practices. Tools include ways to customize scripts to people’s specific jobs, Email reminders, posters and fliers, a monitoring device, an employee recognition method, and more.
- Six-week follow-up campaign for habit-building on great greetings
- Two-month follow-up campaign for habit-building on great handoffs
- Six-week follow-up campaign for habit-building on great goodbyes
Phase 2: Best Practices for Dealing with Difficult Situations
Groundwork- Consultant meets with office administrators and managers to identify most frequent and frustrating customer interactions. Consultant then works with a Design Team representing the various practices to identify approaches most effective in handling these difficult situations.
- Consultant drafts the needed scripts and tools and meets with the Design Team and practice champions (in person or by phone) to pilot and refine them. (These leaders are responsible for implementation with their teams.)
- Core Workshop #2: Dealing with Difficult Situations: Consultant pilots this workshop with the leadership group and refines it based on their feedback. Then, everyone throughout the practice or center attends one of the many sessions offered.
- Follow-Up: With support and tools from Wendy Leebov and Associates, the project leader orchestrates a 3-month follow-up campaign to support implementation of solutions to each team’s most frequent and challenging difficult situations.
Training for Leaders on Managing Performance
The group also engages Wendy Leebov and Associates to provide training for leaders on skills, including:
- How to hire great communicators
- How to hold performance conversations with high, middle and low performers
- Coaching and feedback skills
- Employee recognition skills
- Skills for holding people accountable
Phase 3: Comprehensive Service Audit and
Patient Experience Improvement Plans
To continue the momentum and drive continuous improvement, the practice or center conducts a comprehensive Service Audit process. They examine survey data, do walk-throughs with guided observations, and have a mix of staff and patients complete diagnostic questions.- The audit includes two parts: A Service Culture Audit and a Service Performance Audit. Together, these help practices look at systems, work processes, people’s performance, personnel practices, recognition practices, meetings, patient/family communication, and performance and improvement opportunities related to the CAHPS (or other) survey questions.
- Leaders coordinate the Audit with their teams and each facility team develops its own improvement plan, process and timeline.
- Wendy Leebov and Associates also provides a resource book of solutions targeted to each improvement opportunity identified in the audit.
Add-on Services Chosen by Some Clients
Wendy Leebov and Associates - Provides further training on “Hard Conversations” for providers and staff
- Customizes a comprehensive Human Resources Manual for leaders – a manual that spells out HR practices that reinforce exceptional service performance and advances the quality patient experience
- Designs the customer service component of new employee orientation, including a booklet for staff with performance standards
- Provides the tools needed for an ongoing Academy Awards process and annual event for employee and team recognition
- Develops a squad of effective employees to serve as peer coaches who help coworkers to craft job-specific scripts, rehearse scripts and skills and make them habit
Strategies such as this produce significant improvement in patient satisfaction, winning the practice or center a distinguished position in the competitive healthcare marketplace.
Option #2: Staff Training Strategy--“The Quality Patient Experience:
From Good to WOW!”
Wendy Leebov and Associates provides a powerful training strategy to enhance the communication skills and demonstrated compassion of your entire team.
Goals
- Inspire staff to move from good to WOW in their interactions with patients and each other
- Identify and practice specific communication skills key to high patient satisfaction and harmonious staff relationships
Components of Approach
- A series of three briefings for staff (2 hours each); includes demonstrations and hands-on practice
- One-hour meeting with supervisor to walk through follow-up strategies that promote application of skills learned
- Great materials
- For staff: Reminder Cards
- For supervisor: Booklet of follow-up strategies, awareness raising fliers, and script examples that reflect best practices in concrete situations
Content Outline
Briefing 1: From “Good” to WOW” in Everyday Routines
Key words and behaviors at key times help to build rapport and communication with patients and families. This briefing focuses on pivotal interactions and how staff can IMPRESS patients and families with their care and concern during these everyday interactions.- Quick review of the case for moving from good to WOW in patient and family satisfaction
- Skills that WOW
- The pivotal skill of “presence”
- Best practices during
- Greetings
- Handoffs
- Goodbyes
Briefing 2: Communicating Empathy and Caring
While people in health care are very caring people, patients and families don’t know it, unless staff COMMUNICATE their caring. This briefing presents six skills that help staff communicate their caring effectively, so patients really feel it.- The powerful “Heart-Head-Heart Communication Model for communicating caring in everyday interactions
- The language of caring: Six skills for communicating heart-to-heart
- Practice worksheets to guide practice in everyday situations
Briefing 3: How to Deal with Difficult Situations
In the face of daily complaints, resistance and hostility, some staff members become defensive and react with statements like these:- “Look! It’s not our fault! It’s those insurance companies.”
- “I’m sorry, but that’s our policy and you knew about it!”
- “Don’t blame me. That doctor’s always late!” With the right skills and scripts for recurrent situations, your staff can replace defensive reactions with constructive, compassionate ones in the face of patient frustration. In the face of unsettling behavior, professionalism requires empathy, direct and tactful communication, and resourcefulness. This workshop briefs staff on win-win communication skills, empathy, tactful communication, and resourcefulness) for handling difficult situations with patients and coworkers.
- Preventing difficult interactions (quick connecting and adjusting patient/family expectations)
- How to use Caring Communication Skills and the Caring Broken Record to handle anger, complaints and resistance CARINGLY when you need to hold your ground
- Practice in common tough situations, including saying “no” when the patient wants a ‘yes’, handling delays, and fielding complaints
- Includes print-ready handouts, Staff Reminder Cards and a follow-up toolkit for supervisors to help them engage their work teams in applying the skills learned to their own job-specific situations
Partial Client List
- Affiliated Pediatric Practices; Needham, MA
- John Stoeckle Center for Primary Care Innovation; Boston, MA
- Institute for Clinical Systems Improvement; Minneapolis, MN
- Primary Care Development Corporation; NY, NY
- New England Quality Care Alliance; Dedham, MA
- Woodhull Pediatric Practice; Bronx, NY
- Jacobi Medical Center; North Central Bronx Practices; Bronx, NY
- Partners Community Health Plan; Boston area
- Cumberland Valley Medical Services; Chambersburg, PA
To discuss Quality Patient Experience Services tailored to the unique needs of your medical practice or ambulatory care setting,
contact us.
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