Vila Health: Patient Flow
Elizabeth Bowerman
Capella University
2 Introduction Customer satisfaction is the key to running a successful business, and when customers are unhappy with the products or services offered, they may find other places to access the product. Patient satisfaction was and still is the main driving force contributing to the success of healthcare organizations. Also, a healthcare system must continuously find a way to improve patient care and satisfaction and find ways to deliver the most current and safe patient procedure.
Patient Satisfaction “Patient satisfaction can be an indicator of success in several aspects of a healthcare entity, and it is used to measure quality and can affect clinical outcomes, patient retention, and malpractice claims” (Prakash, 2010). Patients also tend to improve when they receive quality care and services. Hence, the health systems at Vila Health try to use patient satisfaction to their advantage over the other healthcare organizations.
In a health care setting, it is referred to having more patients coming into a facility or seeing their healthcare provider regularly. So, by assessing patient satisfaction surveys, Vila Health healthcare systems try to establish a different advantage over their competition. When we identify areas where patient satisfaction is lacking, Vila Health looks into improving those areas and identifying the prosperous areas. All healthcare organizations can identify where they succeed the most in the areas they lack and would like to develop strategies to help improve those areas.
“Strategic planning provides a roadmap to where the company is going and the directions on how to get there” (Drewniak, 2014). Declining Patient Satisfaction Rules At Vila Health, the patient flow through the emergency department looks to be a place they lack and is the leading cause of decreased patient satisfaction. 47% of surveys conducted and returned were from the ER and the overall satisfaction for wait times was 49%. There are strategic initiatives that have been in place that should reflect these numbers and the work that is
3 needed to improve patient flow and decrease wait times. In the quality assurance survey report, the issue is that patient satisfaction has decreased from 93 to 79% in eight months. This big of a decrease could potentially mean that the organization is heading down a dark path and several reasons for a decrease in patient satisfaction. “Five of the most common expectations