Background: Patient experience is a key indicator of healthcare quality, influencing both satisfaction and outcomes. Despite ongoing efforts to improve care, many patients continue to report unmet needs or concerns, particularly in the late afternoon and evening hours. Addressing these concerns before the end of the day is essential to enhancing overall patient experience.
Purpose: This initiative seeks to improve patient experience by implementing “tuck-in rounds” in the afternoon to identify and address patient concerns before the end of the day. Using closed-loop communication ensures that issues are resolved or appropriately escalated.
Description: “Tuck-in rounds” are focused afternoon rounds with the specific intent of addressing any patient concerns that may have arisen throughout the day. These rounds involve proactive check-ins with patients, providing an opportunity to ask targeted questions about unmet needs, ensure concerns are communicated to the care team, and follow up on issues before the end of the shift. Closed-loop communication ensures that any identified concerns are thoroughly addressed or escalated as needed.
Conclusions: After implementing tuck-in rounds, patient experience, as measured by the Press Ganey score, improved significantly. Over a four-month period, the score increased from an initial value of 63 to 81.0, demonstrating the effectiveness of this proactive approach in addressing patient needs and concerns in real time. This improvement highlights the positive impact of targeted patient engagement and timely issue resolution on overall satisfaction. Tuck-in rounds, combined with closed-loop communication, improve patient experience by proactively addressing concerns in real time. This approach reduces frustration, enhances care quality, and contributes to higher patient satisfaction scores, as evidenced by the substantial increase in Press Ganey scores following implementation.