CASE STUDY

Healthcare

CAMC Improves Patient Admission Process with Welcome Video and SmarTigr

Warm Welcome initiative reduces admission times, increases educational outcomes, and improves patient and staff feedback.

Charleston Area Medical Center

 

NOTE: In April 2022 TeleHealth Services was rebranded under the name of our sister company, Avidex. The consolidation of our brands significantly enhances our capabilities to create better experiences for patients, visitors, and staff. Case studies may have been written under our former name, but now reflect the Avidex brand.

 

The Client

Charleston Area Medical Center (CAMC) is a nonprofit, 908-bed, regional referral and academic medical center with more than 7,500 employees.

CAMC is home to one of the largest heart programs in the United States; the only kidney transplant center in West Virginia; the highest-level trauma center; the state’s only freestanding children’s hospital and is a 2015 recipient of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. 

Solutions Implemented

Tigr Interactive Patient Education System
Avidex 360° Manged Services TM

 

Charleston Area Medical Center

Licensed Beds 

956

Customer Since

2015

Location

Charleston, WV

# of Employees

7,500

The Challenge:

Today’s larger healthcare facilities can be confusing and somewhat frightening for patients who are not familiar with the hospital environment. Patients and their families are not always prepared or are uncertain as to what to expect when being admitted for a multiple-day stay.

The admissions process is the starting point for inpatient services. A patient’s first impression helps establish a framework for a positive or negative experience that impacts patient perception and satisfaction.

The Solution:

When Charleston Area Medical Center in Charleston, WV, rolled out the SmarTigr Interactive Patient Education system across their four campuses in March 2015, hospital leaders began exploring opportunities to leverage the system to create a better patient experience.  “We recognized that the most logical place to start improving the patient experience was at the very beginning, with the admission,” explains Beverly Thornton, Education Division Director at CAMC’s Health Education and Research Institute and on-site administrator of the SmarTigr system.

Maricris Miller, Associate Administrator at CAMC Women & Children’s Hospital, led the charge for improving CAMC’s admission process during her tenure as the health system’s Patient Experience Director.

Recounting a moment of insight from a restaurant visit, Ms. Miller shares the inspiration for transforming the way that patients are welcomed to their hospital stay.

“When you walk into a restaurant, there’s a lot of work that goes into making you feel welcome. If you’re observing an important occasion, the entire team of wait staff comes to the table to celebrate with you,” explains Ms. Miller.  “A hospitalization is an important event in a person’s life. Patients arrive to the unit fearful and anxious. The last thing we want is to have them feel even more vulnerable if no one is there to welcome them right away. Having a standardized warm welcome, delivered by a well-coordinated team, is exactly what we needed to make it a patient-centered processes.”

CAMC Patient in bed-with LED

Along with the desire to increase patient satisfaction, CAMC leaders also called for improvements in the clinical realm. Specifically, they sought to reduce the average admission time of 45 minutes and hoped to see communication and coordination among teams on patient care units improve.

CAMC’s Service Excellence Innovation Team led the implementation of CAMC’s “Warm Welcome” initiative in January 2016.  A pilot project was implemented on four units to trial a newly developed Welcome Pathway, which included scripting, new workflows and a welcome video produced by CAMC.  

The five-minute video opened with a greeting by CEO David Ramsey followed by scenes featuring CAMC employees cast in roles as staff and patients.  The messages presented in the short program helped patients recognize what to expect during a typical hospital stay.

The Welcome Pathway directed the admitting clinician to play the video on-demand for the patient within 12 hours of admission, a workflow change that leadership felt was necessary for the initiative to be successful.  

“Rather than scheduling the video for continuous play on a designated channel, we believed it was important for staff to introduce the video and start it for the patient. We know people are overwhelmed, anxious and not feeling their best when they’re admitted to the hospital, so we didn’t want to place the burden on patients to be responsible for finding the video on TV and watching it themselves. Orientation education is our responsibility, not the patient’s,” says Ms. Miller.

Launching the video on-demand also gave CAMC the ability to keep count of viewing activity through reports generated by the SmarTigr system.CMAC Graphic

Ms. Miller further explains, “Tracking the utilization helped each of the units with accountability. We added welcome video utilization to our Top 5 board, which is part of our Performance Improvement framework. Unit managers receive data every month benchmarking their progress toward each of CAMC’s top 5 priorities for improvement. As we saw video views increasing and observed improvements in other measures tied to the welcome process, it helped us recognize that the video was making a positive impact.”

Among the clinical improvements noted1 were:

  • A decrease in admission time from 45 to 15 minutes
  • An improvement in admitting diagnosis education and medication education (up 24%) 
  • An increase in whiteboard completion (up 23%)

Starting the patient’s hospitalization on a high note is an investment in the patient satisfaction bank. -

Maricris Miller

Associate Administrator

Maricris Miller (2)

In addition, a patient satisfaction survey was conducted on the units pre- and post-implementation of the Warm Welcome process.  While improvements were noted in every measure, significant increases were noted in responses that addressed2:

  • Unit is aware that patient has arrived (up 46%)
  • Staff available at bedside when patient arrives (up 45%)

CMAC Graphic 2The increase in patient satisfaction was also reflected in CAMC’s HCAHPS survey responses on the units in which the pilot was implemented.  CAMC’s scores on Nurse Communication specifically on courtesy and respect was at top decile in 20163 Patients’ overall satisfaction with how they were welcomed to the unit were measured through a mobile rounding app and had an 81.21% top box response--scores of ‘9’ and ‘10’ on a scale of 0 (lowest) to 10 (highest).

Upon the completion of the highly successful pilot test, CAMC rolled out the Warm Welcome initiative across inpatient units throughout the four-hospital system.  The welcome video quickly became and remains to this day the #1 most viewed title at CAMC.4  Staff in patient care units are also positive about the new Warm Welcome process, which saves them time and helps CAMC realize savings in staff efficiency (annualized savings of $54,1955 in 2016).

Some of the most exciting changes that have come about from CAMC’s Warm Welcome initiative, however, are not as easily captured in numbers.  “Starting the patient’s hospitalization on a high note is an investment in the patient satisfaction bank,” Ms. Miller says.  “We love the way the video helps patients feel an instant connection to their caregivers.  It’s a wonderful thing when a doctor or nurse walks into the room and the patient says ‘I just saw you on TV.  You’re a star!’”

Sources

1CAMC Top 5 Board data, 2016

2CAMC Top 5 Board data, 2016

3Source: CAMC HCAHPS survey results, 2016

4SmarTigr system utilization reports

5Based on decreased admission time from 45 to 15 minutes. 30 minutes of an RN’s time in Charleston WV approximates $15 (source: average hourly salary for Registered Nurse in Charleston, WV, salary.com). 3,613 total ‘Warm Welcome’ video views in 2016 reflect the 3,613 times that the Warm Welcome Pathway was implemented. Savings equate to $54,195 in staff efficiency.

 

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