Barnes-Jewish Hospital guest services improves complaint management process
Posted By: Sarah Kinkade 
Date Posted: March 24th, 2011 Category: Health Care
BJH• Barnes-Jewish Hospital’s guest services staff now has a more reliable and efficient process for responding to patient complaints to ensure they’re handled in a timely manner. A team studying the process found file duplication and a fragmented approach to managing complaints. The guest services team then mapped out an “ideal state,” or best-case scenario, for the complaint management process.
In the “current state” of the process — when guest services involved Lean process improvement techniques — complaints weren’t responded to consistently within the 21-day time limit (a time limit is required by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid).
Guest services explored various ways to document complaints, including a voice recording system. They also analyzed the current process by using a Lean tool called a “process walk.” The group walked through the steps a response letter takes to find issues with the process. By conducting rapid experiments, the team developed and implemented standard work for both the employee and the manager, and set a cycle time baseline to track how long it takes to respond to complaints.
See also: Barnes-Jewish Hospital patient advocate shares her story
“Throughout the event, I was amazed by how many steps our work incorporated and how many people and departments are involved,” says Kathy Rascher, guest services manager.
After the improvements were put in place, guest services was able to process more feedback issues with less duplicated work and improved the turnaround time.
“We started our lean journey with a 5S (a tool used to implement a high-efficiency workspace) of our office,” says Rascher. “That laid the groundwork for the process mapping event. This event made me realize the good work we are doing and how exciting it is to work on ways to do it better.”
