Advocate Health is using volunteers to help improve the patient experience for inpatients.
Bradley Kruger, MA, MBA, vice president for patient experience at Advocate Health says the Charlotte, North Carolina-based health system is using volunteers to contact patients after they have been hospitalized to see whether they need help in the inpatient setting.
"At Advocate Health, we have more than 10,000 volunteers who contribute more than 500,000 hours of effort every year," Kruger says. "That time supports patients at the bedside—we are using the volunteers to improve patient experience, quality, and safety across the organization."
One volunteer initiative uses 100 virtual volunteers who are mainly pre-med students.
"They learn how to navigate Epic and how to talk with patients," Kruger says. "They call patients within 24 hours of them being admitted to a hospital, mostly patients over the age of 65 who have been admitted from the emergency room."
Click on the video below to see how the volunteer initiative works. Click here to read the accompanying HealthLeaders story.
Christopher Cheney is the CMO editor at HealthLeaders.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Advocate Health generates 2.5 million patient experience surveys annually.
The health system looks for actionable patient experience feedback from individual patients and groups of patients.
Listening to patients then acting on their feedback is crucial for patient experience success.