Hospital patient support program improves patient experience scores by 20%

The background:

A leading hospital with significant maternity care — 7,000+ births per year — sought to improve their patient experience and make their facility more hospitable, an aspect of care that is critical to patient engagement, patient confidence, and healing. The administration wanted to increase patients’ comfort during their stay without increasing the workload of their care teams. Their goal was to elevate the patient experience and validate that experience through higher patient experience survey scores.

The Circles solution:

Circles collaborated with hospital leadership to establish ‘At Your Service’ (AYS), an innovative assistance program that addressed both inpatient and outpatient needs. This new program would provide much-needed services so that patients would feel cared for and comforted during their hospital stay.

The program tends to all patient non-medical needs by fulfilling requests that range from ordering outside meal delivery, providing books and magazines, procuring personal care items, coordinating salon services, fulfilling travel and transportation requests and running external errands. The program includes:

• An on-site service desk in main lobby of maternity unit, manned 7 days a week
• Dedicated AYS work-life balance advocates available from 9:00 am - 8:30 pm
• Hands-on program support including attending nurse meetings and making rounds to patients
• Program marketing materials to create awareness including welcome packets, brochures, flyers and comment cards
• Branded materials including content development for hospital website and intranet

The outcome:

Program successes to-date include:

• 12,946 service requests fulfilled in the first year
• An average of 23,360 service requests fulfilled annually during the first three years
• Patient experience scores jumped 20% within the first six months
• After the program launched, patient experience scores averaged 90

“AYS has helped us improve the patient experience. The increased score means we’re making an even bigger difference in the lives of our patients, helping them achieve and maintain wellness by creating a healthcare environment that is truly patient-centered.” – VP of Patient Experience