Increasing Nurse Satisfaction with Outreach

This leading comprehensive care network with hundreds of healthcare facilities around the country is dedicated to improving service delivery and patient outcomes across the care continuum. Enhancing patient satisfaction is a top priority for this integrated system of hospitals, outpatient centers, physician practices and other medical facilities.

CHALLENGE

This for-profit healthcare services enterprise experienced challenges allocating labor resources for the post-discharge follow-up process. Hospital-based callback teams used different processes, leading to disparate and overlapping manual call efforts. To meet the primary goal of increasing CAHPS scores, the healthcare network recognized that it was critical to improve both patient and staff post-discharge experiences and workflows.

SOLUTION

This network of medical facilities partnered with CipherHealth to create meaningful touchpoints with 100% of discharged patients and proactively identify those at risk for adverse events. In February 2016, the healthcare network launched CipherOutreach for post-discharge follow-up at a small number of hospitals. The initial success of these inpatient programs prompted expansion across the region in April 2017. Two months later, all sites subsequently launched outreach programs for Emergency Department patients. To assess the impact of CipherOutreach, the leadership team surveyed staff about their perception of the follow-up process pre- and post- CipherHealth’s implementation.

RESULTS

This healthcare network utilized 1,791 nursing hours with automated outreach as compared to an estimated 22,041 nursing hours needed for a manual outreach program, representing a 92% reduction in hours that would otherwise be allocated to the post-discharge follow-up process. Six months after CipherOutreach go-live, staff were 40% more likely to indicate that their hospital has a clear follow-up process with discharged patients and 40% more likely to indicate an ability to track and trend data regarding post-discharge patient concerns. CipherOutreach serves as a powerful triaging solution for the follow-up process, enhancing staff workflow efficiency and improving issue resolution.

NURSE SATISFACTION SURVEY RESULTS PRE VS. POST IMPLEMENTATION

CLIENT: National Comprehensive Care Network, PRODUCT: Post-Discharge Follow Up, PROGRAM: Readmissions Reduction, DATA PERIOD: April – October 2017