The Privilege of Being Busy: Balancing Productivity and Patient Experience

Margaret Leaf, Senior Patient Experience Analyst, UW Health
Gregg Heatley MD, MMM, Vice Chair, Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, UW Health

After our organization moved to provider-level sampling and reporting of patient experience data, one of the most common concerns we heard was how to maximize the two seemingly incongruent demands of high productivity and high patient satisfaction. In many cases, clinicians assume that productivity and patient satisfaction are mutually exclusive, or that improving in one area requires sacrifice in the other. We wanted to better understand the relationship between patient satisfaction and productivity in the ambulatory setting, in order to address clinicians’ concerns and share best practices. This session will identify specific techniques even the “busiest” clinicians can use to connect with patients and improve patient satisfaction performance, understand the relationship between volume and patient experience at one academic medical center and understand how to use quantitative and qualitative data to address clinicians’ questions and concerns around patient experience.