Project Name:
Inform & Involve Patients and Families ("Ask Me!" program)

Project Timeframe: 2007 – 2008

Project Description and Purpose:
The overall arching goal of the "Ask Me!" program is to systematically improve patient satisfaction and build a culture of service excellence throughout Rutland Regional Medical Center by best informing and involving our patients and families in their health care.

Project Team:
The Patient Satisfaction Team was formed in 2006 and has been actively working in response to our quest to be the Best Community Hospital and Health Care System in New England. The team is a multi disciplinary group composed of front line staff as well as leadership. Rutland Regional is committed to improving our patient satisfaction at all levels. Participating in Press Ganey, a national survey tool that gathers information from over 7,000 hospitals for the past 20 years, Rutland Regional has been able to benchmark its patient responses and determine areas for improvement

Project Goals & Objectives:
After an extensive evaluation of the data collected from Press Ganey patient satisfaction tool, and interviews with patients and families it was determined that the greatest opportunity for improvement is to inform and involve patients and families in treatment decisions.

We piloted the "Ask Me!" initiatives in several inpatient and outpatient departments. A great deal of education was provided to staff regarding the use of the tools and the overall culture of making certain patients and families were indeed informed and involved in their care. We recognize that the designed tools can support the process of informing and involving people but value the criticality and importance of health care providers taking the time, language and compassion to make certain patient and families understand and are engaged in their care.

Project Progress/Results:
The team initially considered designed several initiatives that were trialed in patient care areas throughout the hospital. All of these items were intended to open the communication lines between patients, families and their health care team. When it comes to health, we want patient and family participation to partner in making the best informed decisions.

Since originally defining the initiatives we have fine-tuned the improvement theory and better included all departments (inpatient, outpatient and ancillary) and their unique opportunities to provide information. We have resurveyed patients and families as well as monitored our Press Ganey data to make certain we are indeed keeping them better informed and involved.

The final "ASK ME!" initiatives you will see throughout the hospital include:

• White Communication Boards in patient areas are personalized to display the names of the health care team and the plans of care.
• Information Cards, specific to the areas that are visited contain general information (meal times, phone numbers, room numbers, etc.).
• Note Pads that have "Ask Me!" titles are located throughout patient care areas. We hope patients and families use these pads to jot down questions while here at Rutland Regional Medical Center. We encourage people to take them home to remind them to write down questions they want to discuss with health care providers and family members.
• Brochures and Posters have been created to define the ASK ME! message, that is, to encourage two-way communication and keep patients and families informed and involved in their heath care.

Evaluation Process:
We developed compliance measures and tools to check the progress of staff education and utilization. An example is below:

We also began to monitor our results via the Press Ganey Patient Satisfaction Survey to see what our patients had to say; were we indeed keeping them informed and involved in their health care? Was this information and involvement increasing their overall satisfaction with their visit? We are monitoring progress in several methods. For example, we monitor the Press Ganey Inpatient Report for overall patient satisfaction:

While we are seeing great success in monitoring how well our health care providers are using the "Ask Me!" tools, there is an expected time lapse to when we will be able to measure the impact of the "Ask Me!" initiatives on our patients' satisfaction through the quarterly Press Ganey reports.

Our timeline:

We will continue to expect our health care team to use the "Ask Me!" tools and monitor our progress to improve Patient Satisfaction. We value service excellence and feel this is an important component to be the Best Community Hospital and Health Care System in New England.