Clinical Operations
Abstracts
Judith Welsh, MD
Cleveland Clinic, Emergency Services Institute
Richard Wolfe, MD
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School
Study Objectives: Patient experience is a widely measured and reported emergency department (ED) metric. Improving patient experience scores in multiple ED settings across health system can be challenging. The objective of this study was to analyze the impact of a system-wide patient call-back program on patient experience scores.
Methods: A Patient call-back program was initiated for discharged adult ED patients in a large health system utilizing an electronic medical record (EMR) tool. Settings involved 10 urban, suburban, free standing, and rural EDs, and included both academic and community EDs. All care team members, including physicians, nurses, paramedics, respiratory therapists, clinical technicians and unit clerks, participated in patient call-backs, which occurred within 72 hours of discharge. Suggested scripting was available but not required. Direct patient contact and attempts (voice mail contact) were considered a call-back. Press-Ganey (PG) patient experience scores, utilizing unique patient identifiers, were compared between the call-back and no call-back cohorts for patients discharged between October 1, 2016 and September 30, 2017. PE scores were compared across five patient experience domains and are reported as top box percentile rankings based on a comparison of the PG database of client services with at least thirty responses. 95% CI for comparisons of proportions were calculated.
Results: Results are reported for surveys received as of December 31, 2017. 16,904 patients returned patient experience surveys and were included in the analysis. The call-back cohort consisted of 5,996 patients v. 10,908 patients in the no call-back cohort. PG score percentiles are shown by cohort and patient experience domain. Differences in percentile rankings was significant at P<0.0001 for all patient experience domains.
Conclusion: An ED-based patient call-back program resulted in significant increases in patient experience scores across all patient experience domains and in varying ED settings across a large health system.