Raising the bar of Accountability for Healthcare Leaders with Technology-driven Purposeful Leader Rounding

Elizabeth L. Holder, Ed.D., System Director, Patient Experience, SSM Health

SSM Health is a Catholic, not-for-profit organization with 40,000 team members, more than 11,600 providers, and a geographic footprint across the Midwest. Our organization’s goal is to carry out our mission every day with every patient: Through our exceptional healthcare services, we reveal the healing presence of God. One of those ways we can deliver on the mission is through demonstrating our compassion and care for our patients, using purposeful leader rounding.

Purposeful rounding is a well-known technique that helps many healthcare organizations understand the patient’s perspective regarding the care they receive. The benefit of rounding helps health systems, providers and nurses improve the quality of care, improve communication, decrease readmission rates and build a safety net of trust for every patient.

Rounding on patients isn’t a new strategy for our organization, but the way we document and monitor our rounding process has changed. In the past, we utilized Pareto charts and other non-electronic tracking tools systemwide to document conversations with patients. These outmoded techniques aren’t as useful these days as we try to measure and ensure that patient concerns are being addressed in a timely fashion.

In the Fall of 2022, we set out to pilot an electronic rounding tool to help us proactively understand and address patient needs in the Inpatient setting. Our goal was to develop a tool that would do all the things previously mentioned regarding purposeful rounding, in addition to ensuring patients were rounded on by a nurse leader during their stay. The preliminary outcomes from the pilot weren’t surprising. The results revealed that patients who perceived that they were rounded on by a leader during their stay in the hospital were more likely to give us a higher patient experience rating.

Because this was a pilot program, my team and I would meet weekly to discuss leaders’ feedback. My role as a facilitator on the calls was to not only understand and review the data to determine if rounding influenced patient perceptions; I also wanted to gather leaders’ feedback on the tool itself. The Patient Experience Advisors on my team would pose the following questions to their leaders: Is the tool user-friendly? Do the questions get to the heart of what matters the most to patients?

The nurse leaders unanimously believe that the tool has proven user-friendly; it uncovers patients’ needs as well as gives them insight into their teams’ proactive response to patients’ requests. While these responses weren’t surprising, the nurse leaders shared additional benefits to the rounding technology that we didn’t expect, highlighting that it provided more visibility, accountability, and active leader involvement in their Inpatient units.

Increased visibility

Nurse leaders shared that rounds documented on paper didn’t allow them to instantly see the number of rounds completed each day or tabulate themes that emerged. The new technology allowed them to see when the patient was rounded on, who rounded on the patient, and the patient’s responses to each of the questions. Moreover, it quantified and aggregated the data across all patients. The leaders said the previous approach was more time-consuming, leading to hours of sifting through spreadsheets. The electronic rounding method created a means for data to stand out, producing more action planning and proactive responses to patient requests.

Increased Visibility, Accountability, And Active Leader Involvement Are Key To Improving Experiences For Patients And Families In Our Care

Increased accountability

Nurse leaders also shared that the electronic rounding tool increased the level of accountability for nurses. They also report that it has elevated the level of care and coaching at the moment for team members. Because patient comments are visible on reports, the team members have developed a healthy competition to receive monthly recognition from their leaders.

Active leader involvement

This tool has led nurse leaders on all levels of the organization to get involved in the rounding data consistently. It has caused them to have a better understanding of the business needs on a day-to-day basis. Because the data is so readily available once a round is complete, nurse directors and chief nursing officers can follow up on patients’ concerns. It’s difficult to engage in timely responses to patients’ needs when this information is stored on paper documents.

We are looking forward to enhancing and scaling this technology across the organization in 2023. Increased visibility, accountability, and active leader involvement are key to improving experiences for patients and families in our care. It’s most encouraging to see that this technology not only improves experiences for the patients we serve but for the leaders that we support as well.