Inside Duke Medicine

Patients come first at DRH

As a hospital, it is our mission to serve each person who enters our doors and to offer the best possible care to our patients. “Our patients come first,” says Kathy Bass, who works at the Information Desk.

Bass and her co-workers know as well as any Durham Regional employee that when you work in health care, it’s more than a job—it’s your heart. If you are a patient or visitor at Durham Regional, it is likely you will interact with someone from Bass’s team, Guest Services. This division of Durham Regional includes the Information Desk, Valet, Phone Operators and Patient & Visitor Relations.

The First Interaction
The smiling face you first see when you enter the hospital is either Kathy Bass, Carolette Campbell, Mark May or an adult volunteer. Sit on the other side of the Information Desk and you will quickly realize it takes a special person to juggle the multiple phone calls, visitor inquiries and numerous family members checking on their loved one’s status. Serving as the first point of contact to the public, the Information Desk is relied upon to direct patients and visitors to where they need to go, answer any questions people may
have and retrieve patient room numbers via the computer system.

On a slow day, the fast pace can be overwhelming to the casual observer, and yet the calm and friendly Information Desk staff make it look like a “breeze.” “The Information Desk is where patients and visitors form their first impression of Durham Regional, and that impression carries them through the whole experience,” says Katie
Galbraith, chief hospital operations and business development officer. “It’s a critical job.”

Every Second Matters
When someone calls Durham Regional, it is likely they will be assisted by an operator. Often heard but not seen, the team is at the hospital around-the-clock seven days a week, answering an average of 1,600 calls in a typical 24 hour period. The operators must handle multiple requests quickly and accurately.

There is a Code Blue on unit 5-2, and the first thing the staff member does is call the operator at 222. In an emergency, a quick response is key, so operators immediately launch into action. One makes an overhead announcement, while the other types a text page alerting the operator response team and the groups who need to be notified, including Security. When 222 is called, there must be an immediate answer on the other end. “If there is an emergency, every split second matters,” says Joanne Pitman, operator. “I would hate for something to go wrong because we weren’t fast enough or accurate.”

The operators:

• Answer calls from inside and outside the hospital, including calls to the Emergency Department.
• Serve as the after-hours answering service for 50 physician practices (this is during lunches, weekends, nights, holidays and inclement weather).
• Are the pleasant voices who make the overhead announcements.
• Implement emergency communications.

“We really try to get callers what they need,” says Barbara Elliott, operator. “This can be challenging, but by far having that connection with the outside and with patients is the best part of my job.”

Finding a Solution
Patient & Visitor Relations (PVR) works as a liaison with all employees to improve customer service. One essential role of PVR is to be a place patients can call when they are frustrated or simply have a question and aren’t sure what to do. This call can occur at any time during the patient’s experience at Durham Regional and after the patient is discharged. Patients who call the PVR line after hours have the option of calling the Operations Administrator or leaving a message. “We would like to receive a call as soon as someone begins to feel frustrated,” says Deborah Vernon, patient advocate. “That way, we can talk directly to the patient and the care team to try to figure out a solution before it becomes a problem.”

Hilda Southerland, PVR assistant, usually answers the patients’ calls. She obtains as many details as possible. Deborah follows up with the care team on the unit to determine the details and collaborates with team members to find a solution—often called service recovery. Service recovery, which is specific to each situation, includes spending time with the patient to access where the breakdown in service may have occurred. There are times when various areas of the hospital have not worked as a connected team, and PVR helps connect all these areas. Due to regulatory requirements, grievances must be responded to in writing within seven days.

We have a hospital inpatient satisfaction goal of 75th percentile, and we are on our way. In fourth quarter of fiscal year 2009, Durham Regional reached the 61st percentile in patient satisfaction. “This is a significant improvement, and if we continue to work together as one team, it is only a matter of time before we achieve all of our targets,”
says Brian Williams, Guest Services director.

PVR is responsible for all aspects of Press Ganey Patient Satisfaction administration, tabulating, analyzing and delivering patient satisfaction scores for each department weekly. Additionally they work with departments on improvement initiatives and coordinating the celebrations of achievements related to patient satisfaction.

PVR also:

• Delivers electronic cards from family and friends to patients, anywhere from five to 50 a day.
• Facilitates initiatives and projects of the hospital related to patient satisfaction, serves on committees that drive patient satisfaction initiatives and initiates process improvement related to customer service and patient satisfaction (specifically Six Sigma projects).
• Supervises Valet Services, which are contracted employees.

Three customer satisfaction initiatives have been identified for 2010.
We are working to:

• Ensure all departments are rounding regularly on patients, visitors and employees.
• Call all discharged patients to follow up on their care and make sure they have what they need.
• Plan to celebrate our many customer service successes throughout the year.

DRH At A Glance
Hospital Statistics for Fiscal Year 2008
Admissions: 15,562
Emergency Department Visits: 57,394
Babies Delivered: 2,237
Outpatient Visits: 124,633
Surgeries: 17,588