At the start of 2021, many hospital units in the US saw a drop in patient experience scores. This drop happened even in hospitals that usually scored high on national standards like the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey. Mount Sinai Morningside’s 8 East unit also experienced a drop in patient responsiveness ratings and staff engagement early in 2021.
Several problems caused this decline. The large number of patient admissions put pressure on nurses and care assistants, so they had less time to spend with each patient. Floating staff—workers temporarily assigned to 8 East who were not regular team members—made it harder to keep care consistent. Because these staff members were less familiar with the unit’s routines, communication was uneven, which lowered patient satisfaction during care checks.
Hospital leaders realized that fixing these issues needed more than quick fixes. They needed a full approach that involved steady staffing, teamwork, clear communication, and ongoing improvements to bring patient experience back up.
Mount Sinai believed the whole care team affects patient experience. Arthur A. Gianelli, FACHE and President of Mount Sinai Morningside, formed a group with doctors, hospital leaders, and experts in LEAN methods to solve the problem in a full way.
One of the first steps was to make the nursing team more stable by cutting down or removing floating staff on 8 East. These floating staff are nurses or patient care assistants (PCAs) who temporarily work in different units. While this helps cover shortages, it can cause care to be less connected because these staff members might not know the specific procedures or patient needs of the unit.
By assigning nurses and PCAs regularly to 8 East based on patient numbers, Mount Sinai helped staff get to know the patients and the unit better. This steady team improved communication during patient visits, which raised responsiveness scores.
The team made a simple tool, a staffing and census tracking sheet, to help managers watch nurse-to-patient ratios and floating staff assignments closely. This clear view helped them adjust staffing as patients’ needs changed. It also helped stop staff from getting too tired and made sure patients got enough care.
Nurse Manager Susan Ignacio worked closely with Patient Experience Coach Mindy Morris to hold listening sessions with caregiving staff. These talks gave quick feedback on staff problems and ways to communicate better. Role-playing care checks and patient talks was a key part of this training and helped staff get better at talking with patients at their bedside.
Clear and steady communication is very important for patient experience. Patients want to feel listened to and important. Regular updates from nursing staff help patients feel calm, especially in surgery units where patients might feel worried.
The team made a “Narration of Care” Tip Sheet to help nurses and PCAs explain what they were doing and their care plans clearly to patients during visits. This guide helped make sure patients understood what was happening. When patients know what is going on, they feel less worried and trust staff more.
Staff practiced these care checks in role-playing and actual rounds. This practice helped them improve how they talked to patients and respond better. Doing this regularly helped build a habit of patient-centered communication.
Maxine Legall, MBA, MSW, CPXP, Director of Patient Experience and Cultural Transformation, led weekly meetings to look at unit data and talk about patient comments. These meetings helped staff find hidden problems and change their ways when needed. Getting frequent feedback made it possible to fix small issues before they got bigger.
They also used a Daily Management Board to track progress on goals like answering patient call bells quickly and checking on patients often. This board showed performance clearly, which helped keep staff responsible and motivated.
Mount Sinai Morningside used data from the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) surveys. These scores give standard feedback from patients about their hospital experiences and let hospitals see how they do compared to others across the country.
The 8 East unit combined HCAHPS scores with their own internal data to track how they were doing. Early in 2021, the unit scored low on the “Nursing staff check on you” question. After using the staff engagement and communication methods, scores rose a lot by the last part of 2021, reaching levels seen before the COVID-19 pandemic.
These improvements put 8 East in the top 10 percent of similar hospital units across the nation. This showed their methods worked well.
While making staffing and communication better is important, using new technology can also help hospital front offices work more smoothly and improve how fast they respond.
Many hospitals have trouble managing patient phone calls well. Long waits, missed calls, and mixed communication upset patients and lower satisfaction. This is especially true for scheduling appointments, refilling medications, or answering care questions.
Simbo AI is a company that offers AI-powered phone systems designed for healthcare settings. This technology uses natural language processing to understand and reply quickly to patient questions. It lets staff focus more on taking care of patients in person.
Using AI answering services helps cut wait times for calls and makes sure patients get correct information any time of day. This also helps catch patient needs early and speeds up appointment scheduling and follow-up work.
Automated call systems can link directly with Electronic Health Records (EHR) and practice management tools. This lets patients book appointments in real time and keeps their data up to date. This connection lowers the paperwork and manual work that front desk staff often face.
Hospital units like 8 East can combine better communication at the bedside with AI phone systems. This partnership makes the patient experience smoother from first phone call to bedside care.
AI also helps remind patients about upcoming appointments and sends alerts to staff about patients who need more attention. This kind of quick response was important in improving Mount Sinai’s 8 East unit.
Together, AI tools and stable, involved staffing make hospital environments more efficient and responsive.
Their teamwork shows that improving patient experience needs cooperation from caregivers, leaders, and coaches who work together to solve problems.
The Mount Sinai case shows that clear staffing, good communication methods, data tracking, and teamwork can raise patient experience scores. Adding AI and workflow automation in front offices can help by handling routine communications so clinical staff can focus more on patients.
Healthcare managers, practice owners, and IT leaders across the United States can use similar strategies to improve patient experience in their hospitals. This leads to better care outcomes and higher patient satisfaction.
Mount Sinai utilizes data from the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS), which is based on patient responses to surveys evaluating their experiences within the health system.
The unit experienced a decline in patient experience scores due to barriers like limited time with patients, floating staff unfamiliar with unit culture, and unexpectedly high admission rates.
Arthur A. Gianelli, President of Mount Sinai Morningside, led the initiative, along with a team of clinicians, hospital leaders, and LEAN experts.
The unit focused on eliminating the practice of floating staff to other units and created a tracking sheet for staffing ratios, which improved staff satisfaction.
Susan Ignacio, the Nurse Manager, and Patient Experience Coach Mindy Morris collaborated on listening sessions, role-playing Care-Checks, and real-time observations to refine staff interactions with patients.
The ‘Narration of Care’ Tip Sheet provided best practices for Care Checks at the bedside to enhance communication and patient satisfaction.
Continuous Improvement was tracked through a Daily Management Board and Patient Experience Storyboards that identified key process metrics to enhance performance.
To enhance responsiveness, 8 East eliminated floating staff, adjusted nursing staffing per patient census, and increased call bell volume as per guidelines.
By the fourth quarter of 2021, responsiveness ratings rose significantly, and the nursing staff’s checking on patients returned to high levels.
Art Gianelli emphasized that the improvement journey of 8 East illustrates that every member of the team contributes to the overall patient experience.
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