Next step

Continue to work on actual wait times in addition to patients’ perception of wait times.

Biggest challenge

Working short-staffed by three nurses has made it difficult to update the whiteboards regularly, Casey says. Getting co-workers’ buy-in and generating enthusiasm also has proven challenging.  

Advice to other teams

Persevere and imagine the patient’s perspective to stay motivated.

“I just kept doing it because I saw that patients enjoyed the fact that someone was talking to them,” Casey says.

What they would do differently next time

Update patients verbally from the start. Initially, the team displayed the boards in the waiting area without face-to-face communication. But team members got even more positive feedback from patients when a nurse actually talked with them.

Background

General surgery in Cleveland Heights had long struggled with low service scores, particularly in the category of perception of wait times.

After Bedford Primary Care shared its whiteboard project at one of Ohio’s quarterly co-lead meetings, union co-lead Mary Beth Casey spearheaded research into the whiteboards and how they change patients’ perception of wait times. Cleveland Heights and Parma General Surgery teams informally polled patients and began using the whiteboards in August 2011.

“We’ve become such a service-oriented business,” Casey says. “So knowing the best practice to keep us competitive with other markets is what’s going to sustain us.”