Ohio lab assistants boost patient satisfaction with personal touch

Cleveland Heights team members shake off old habits and surprise everyone—patients included

FRIDAY, MARCH 7, 2008 :: By Kellie Applen

Lab assistant Ada Alexander

A team of Ohio lab assistants once known throughout the region for its hopelessly low patient satisfaction scores made a dramatic turnaround last year.

Their "courtesy and helpfulness" scores jumped 11% from 2006 to 2007—in the second quarter of 2007, the scores hit an all-time high, with an 82% favorable rating, compared to usual scores in the 60% to 70% range. And for the first time in recent memory, the Cleveland Heights crew went a year without receiving a single member complaint about the care experience.

Service scores up, wait times down

Not only that, wait times are down and patients are raving about the faster and more professional service, said Bertha Stewart, regional director of laboratory services.

In the second quarter of 2005, 12% of the lab's patients waited more than 15 minutes to be seen. But by the second quarter of 2007, only 1% were waiting after 15 minutes—and by December 2007, every patient was seen within 15 minutes.

Stewart and lab managers throughout the region were stunned by the transformation.

"I about fell out of my chair," Stewart said. "We have been working for years trying to figure out a way to get these scores up."

Help from an independent observer

While the department is not a formal unit-based team, the turnaround began with help from a senior consultant with the Labor Management Partnership.

It didn't take long for the consultant, Nina Jones, to uncover the underlying problem. The lab assistants were unhappy, she said, and for good reason. In just two years, several different managers had blown through the department. Before Jones could address the team's behavior and performance issues, the work environment had to change.

"These women just felt disenfranchised," Jones said. "They felt like they had no voice, no opportunity to contribute to decisions. No power."

New team mentality

Then Thom Johnson was brought in to run the department. Unlike prior managers, Johnson embraced a team mentality and other LMP principals.

"Thom treats them like professional women," Jones said. "He asks for their opinions, he says thank you—and you know what, they will do anything he asks them."

Link between behavior and scores

The lab assistants had heard countless times that they needed to improve patient satisfaction scores. But Jones discovered they didn't fully grasp how their day-to-day behavior impacted those scores.

They believed, Stewart said, that their patients, many of whom they'd been seeing for a long time, loved them as they were. So Jones started regularly showing the assistants their scores and explaining exactly how they could improve them.

"Someone really needed to come in, pull us aside and say, 'This is what we need to do and this is what we need to work toward,' " said Linda Wilburn, a lab assistant II.

The five lab assistants at Cleveland Heights, all members of OPEIU Local 17, have been with Kaiser between 18 and 30 years. After so many years, Jones said, they'd fine-tuned some bad habits.

No fingerpointing

Barbara Daniel, lab assistant II, said their behavior was sometimes unprofessional with each other. When something went wrong, she said, they automatically blamed one another, a survival skill they developed under a previous manager who was quick to write them up when a mistake was made.

Jones, who worked with the team over a nine-month period, encouraged the assistants to look first at their own actions. She also offered constructive, on-the-job advice about handling sticky situations with members and other co-workers.

"Now we get it done without the anger and mistrust of each other," Daniel said. "It's not about us. It's about who we serve and what our purpose is for being here."

Friend or patient?

The assistants know many of their patients well and consider them friends. Some go to the same church or are acquainted in other ways outside of the lab.

Stewart noticed that the assistants' demeanor with some of these members was too casual and might be taken as disrespectful.

It alienated some members and raised concerns among others that they were receiving second-class treatment. When the assistants began to treat everyone the same, members took notice.

Stewart said one patient who frequents the lab blurted out recently, "What happened in here? Have you all been to some kind of class or something?"

Member Carla Ferguson said she too noticed an improvement.

"They are lot more friendly and a lot more professional," Ferguson. "They get you in and get you right out."

Praise from members

The praise from patients is as rewarding as the higher scores, said Parthenia Crenshaw-Harris, a lab assistant II.

"I love coming to work now," Crenshaw-Harris said.

Patients love coming here too, Daniels said.

"And we are determined to keep that it way."