Client Results

Standardizing the Nurse-to-Physician
Contact Process

Located in Clinton Township, Michigan, Henry Ford Macomb Hospital is a 435-bed facility with a medical staff of over 800 physicians. Henry Ford Macomb Hospital is a member of Henry Ford Health System, a Michigan non-profit health care enterprise.

Aim

Reduce communication breakdowns in the nurse-to-physician contact process.

Strategy

1. Standardize the physician contact process by allowing nurses to reach any physician – or covering physician – at any moment in time by dialing a single phone number.
   
   
2. Ensure physicians receive the right calls, at the right time, in the exact way they choose to be reached.
   
   
3. Monitor, measure and continuously improve both process utilization and performance.

Results

1. Nurses now make fewer steps, decision points, and communication handoffs in the course of contacting physicians.
   
   
2. The individual contact preferences that determine how every physician is reached are maintained in a single directory, accessible via a single phone number.
   
   
3. When a nurse attempts to contact a physician, the new process responds to the doctor’s rules for that moment in time, automatically assembles the correct call path, and then routes the call accordingly.
   
   
4. The need for nurses to find, read and interpret multiple on-call schedules, phone lists and individual physician instructions for each and every call are eliminated – and with it the associated delays, waste and potential for human error.
   
   
5. Automatic documentation and performance reporting by contact date, time, recipient, originating department and contact method provide the means to continuously improve it.

Download Performance Improvement Storyboard