Download Performance Improvement Story Board
Aim
To reduce communication breakdowns in the nurse-to-physician contact process.
Strategy
- 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.
- Ensure physicians receive the right calls, at the right time, in the exact way they choose to be reached.
- Monitor, measure and continuously improve both process utilization and performance.
Results
- Nurses now make fewer steps, decision points and communication handoffs in the course of contacting physicians.
- The individual contact preferences that determine how every physician is reached are maintained in a single directory, accessible via a single phone number.
- When a nurse attempts to contact a physician, the new process responds to the doctors rules for that moment in time, automatically assembles the correct call path, and then routes the call accordingly.
- 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.
- Automatic documentation and performance reporting by contact date, time, recipient, originating department and contact method provides the means to continuously improve.