Chapter 5 of
Transforming Health Care
talks about Virginia Mason's journey in
revamping ambulatory care.
In their previous life, the Kirkland facility
experienced frustrated patients who complained about long wait times and
expressed extreme dissatisfaction with their physician.
There is even the case of
a fatal mistake due to missed information.
Discuss the major, and minor changes,
instituted which turned care around for ambulatory care at the Kirkland Facility.
The first step in improving patient and physician satisfaction was to eliminate the appointment
backlog. This step took nine months with providers working overtime to eliminate this backlog which
allowed for a more flexible approach to scheduling (Kenney & Virginia, 2010, p. 71). The next issue
was how to handle their phone operating system. Patients were frustrated when their phone calls
went unanswered, a return call wasn’t guaranteed, and information couldn’t be provided, therefore,
Kirkland decided to implement a receptionist duty where trained medical assistants were responsible
for answering the phone (Kenney & Virginia, 2010, p. 72).
Providers tend to treat symptoms instead of focusing on the whole patient long-term,
however, Dr. Pittenger made clear that treating the whole patient had better results than simply
treating the symptoms as there could be underlying or additional conditions that are missed (Kenney
& Virginia, 2010, p. 73-74). In terms of administrative needs, the facility took a breakthrough
approach in attempting to build an IT system that allowed them to not need paper records as much.
Obviously with mandated EHR regulations today, this is no longer an issue, but at the time it was
groundbreaking. By allowing medical assistants to take a larger role, providers were able to eliminate
the stress that “junk” caused and whittled down the completion time to just minutes in between
exams instead of hours after the clinic closed. By standardizing care, Virginia Mason was able to
improve patient satisfaction while boosting the moral of its staff members.
Reference
Kenney, C., & Virginia, M. C. (2010).
Transforming health care: Virginia mason medical center's
pursuit of the perfect patient experience
. Productivity Press.
