Teamwork - December 20, 2002

Service Excellence In Action

Making the New BMC Outpatient Center The Best Place for Patients

This fall, representatives from 10 Borgess departments and BHA entities gathered at the Navigation Center on BMC's campus to discuss ways to help make the new BMC Outpatient Diagnostic and Treatment Center the Best Place for Patients.

To serve this objective, participants were asked to put themselves in the place of patients. From that perspective, they identified specific opportunities for making a positive impact on the patient experience.

"This Navigation Center event was an excellent example of how bringing people together to focus on a single objective can prove extremely valuable," said Linda Albery, BMC VP & Chief Operating Officer. "The participants identified a large number of opportunities for making a positive impact on our patients' experience, which will be put into effect in the new facility and, in some cases, in existing areas."

The discussions focused on: systems and processes of care; the design of the building and its interior environment; and ways in which patients will make contact with our employees and physicians.

"Teams of employees from our existing ambulatory care areas evaluated how outpatients experience their care and service currently," said Jerry Flynn, Laboratory Director. "Then, by utilizing ideas and service models provided by our Customer Relations Department, they created patient flow charts to determine multiple opportunities for addressing customer needs within the Outpatient Diagnostic and Treatment Center. They also listed critical behaviors that are important for their particular departmental staffs to exhibit in order to create and ideal customer experience."

"The Navigation Center event proved highly valuable," said Doug Hall, Customer Relations Director. "We not only discovered ways for designing customer service for the new outpatient center, but the participants also came up with many ways that service can be enhanced in existing outpatient areas. Several of those ideas will be put into action in the upcoming months, in order to optimize our patients' experience at the earliest possible point and prepare ourselves for the state-of-the-art facility that will open next year."