Communication has become the new standard of care in our skilled nursing facility. My name is Jaclyn Hall, and I’m a skilled nursing administrator in eastern Iowa. Prior to November, 2019, my facility experienced the following communication problems:
- Our receptionist constantly fielded phone calls from anxious families who felt “in the dark”.
- Our patients had no clear understanding of their daily schedule, which resulted in fear and anxiety.
- Each service (bath, activities, salon, transportation) was spending valuable time scheduling, but it wasn’t well coordinated with other services, resulting in conflicts and inefficiency.
- Our Therapists rarely met or exceeded our 75% hourly productivity and efficiency goal.
- Way too many preventable “fires” needed to be put out by the Administrative team.
Simple Changes, Big Outcomes
In the months since implementing simple changes, we’ve been able to address the above problems and they have improved…some drastically! We’ve since seen increases in morale, patient satisfaction, family comfort, speed of scheduling, hourly productivity, and efficiency. In summary, we were able to improve the experience of our team AND patients and families due to increased transparency in communication.
“I used to experience frustration because I wasted a lot of time walking around attempting to meet with patients and families. It is now easy for me to see who is available.”– Becca E., Social Worker
So, what happened in November, 2019? How did we leverage communication to improve so many areas? The short answer is that I wanted to improve the daily grind of clunky internal and external communication- the lack of clarity in my facility.
I then reached out to my Tech friends, Megan and Jens Zalzala, and we designed an easy-to-implement web-based application to coordinate our team. The result was Skilled Day, which we rolled out in November, 2019. The results are as follows:
- Families now have easy access to their loved-one’s schedule. This makes it easier for them to be an engaged partner in their care.
- Calls to our office have reduced. If a Loved One calls, any team member can easily know where the patient is and what they are doing.
- Fewer calls means more office efficiency.
- When services are scheduled, aides are 20% more efficient in completing tasks (baths, for example.) Therapists now surpass their productivity goal.
- Patients know exactly what to expect for their schedule daily.
- Internal scheduling conflicts between staff have improved greatly.
These other facets of our services improved as well– Weekly Bedside Care Conferences, and Patient Experieince. To find out more, watch the video below, and then schedule a demo with Skilled Day!
Jaclyn Hall is a Co-Founder of Skilled Day and the Administrator at the UnityPoint Health St. Luke’s Hospital Transitional Care Center, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. She has a Doctor of Physical Therapy from the University of Iowa, where she also received her Master of Business Administration. Jaclyn is a Certified Professional of Healthcare Quality through the National Association for Healthcare Quality.