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In This Issue:
What’s In a Name? A lot, really.
A More Pleasing Process for Patients
As a means to become the academic and community hospitals of choice, senior leaders at Brigham and Women’s/Faulkner Hospitals (BW/F) have launched an aggressive new initiative to redefine the pre-surgical process at both hospitals.
As surgical volume continues to climb at Brigham and Women’s/Faulkner Hospitals (BW/F), a 12-member Pre-Surgical Service Excellence team, composed of staff from both hospitals, is working to enhance and improve patients’ experiences in advance of surgical procedures.
The Pre-Surgical Service Excellence initiative is one of four projects launched in 2003 under the BW/F Service Excellence program. That program seeks to create a culture of excellence throughout BW/F through the implementation of several improvement projects rolled out over the next five years. “This is an exciting opportunity for us to reinvent the way in which we interact with our patients,” Gary Gottlieb, MD, MBA, president, BWH. “It provides us with a clear opportunity to differentiate ourselves from other health care organizations.”
BW/F has enlisted IDEO, a design and transformation firm that helps organizations become innovative leaders, to be a part of the pre-surgical team. The team is off to a fast start conducting observational visits in the pre-admitting areas and informational interviews with staff at both BWH and Faulkner to get a clearer sense of opportunities for improvement. The information they have been collecting is being organized into several themes, such as setting patients’ expectations, designing efficient care model and gathering clinical information, which the team will tackle in the months ahead.
“The team’s efforts are aimed to aid BW/F in fostering a more comfortable, organized and effective pre-surgical experience for our patients,” said Susan Dempsey, director of Surgical Program Development at BWH, who explained that although BWH’s and Faulkner’s pre-surgical processes may differ, each campus will benefit from the synergy of the team’s work.
“Our collaboration with BWH provides us with the opportunity to enhance our care delivery model to provide our patients with the best possible care,” said Pat Simmons, RN, director of Surgical Services at Faulkner Hospital.
By the end of June the Pre-Surgical Service Excellence team will have prototyped and tested many innovative solutions to these and other areas of improvement. Once they have identified those that hold the most promise, they will bring together the staff responsible for the redesign of the pre-surgical process to begin the implementation phase. To ensure success, members of the core design group will remain involved with the project over time.