INNOVATORS Gold Award - New Orleans City Business

MEDICAL
Patient Comment System
Touro Infirmary
Key innovation: customized system for tracking and
responding to patient evaluations
Where they’re based: New Orleans
Top executive: Dora Prosper, patient relations manager
Year introduced: 2007
FOR YEARS TOURO INFIRMARY would collect evaluation
forms from discharged patients and store them on a
file server.
Department heads could take a look at the comments if
they wished, but there was no method for measuring
improvements in patient care in response to the comments
or holding individual units accountable for making such
improvements.
Last year Touro implemented a new tracking and
response system designed to ensure every patient concern
from nursing care to the taste of the food gets attention.
Now, all patient comments are distributed electronically
to the appropriate departments, where directors and
managers are responsible for responding to each one.
The hospital’s information technology, patient relations
and organizational learning and effectiveness departments
partnered with the health care survey provider Avatar
International Inc.
“Avatar tracks the quantitative data. We’re tracking the
qualitative data,” said Touro systems analyst Jason
Duncan, who developed the software.
In May, Touro received an Avatar Innovation Award at
the annual Avatar Client Symposium in Orlando for its work
in improving patient care through the comment system.
Patient relations manager Dora Prosper is responsible
for administering the comment system, which randomly
selects patients to receive surveys two weeks after they are
discharged from the hospital. About 470 patients return
the surveys each month.
“I read them and make sure they go to the right department,”
Prosper said. “Sometimes we have one comment that
involves several units, and each unit will get a copy. That
enables the units to correct whatever issue the patient had.”
When Duncan and other team members who worked
on the project presented a workshop at the Avatar
Symposium, they made quite an impression.
“The other hospitals that use Avatar’s product didn’t
have a way to track comments,” Duncan said. “When we
got done with the demo, we asked if anybody had any
questions, and everybody’s hand went up.”
Workshop participants wanted to know if they could
either buy the software or download it for free, but Duncan
said making the technology available to others isn’t feasible
at this point.
“Whenever you develop software, you’ve got to support
it,” Duncan said. “We don’t have the staff to give that good
customer support.”
At Touro, the system has already shown some positive
results. From October to December, the hospital’s patient
satisfaction scores averaged 91 percent, up from 88.8 percent
for the same period the year before.•
— Sonya Stinson
PHOTO BY TRACIE MORRIS SCHAEFER
Touro Infirmary systems analyst Jason Duncan and patient relations manager Dora Prosper introduce Touro’s Patient Comment System to hospital employees.
40A 2008 Innovator of the Year