Healthcare Executive - November/December 2013 - 48

Satisfying Your Customers

Using Huddles to Enhance
Patient Experience
Robert L. Cooper

James Y. Lee, FACHE

All executives are concerned about
their organizations’ ability to
deliver excellent service to all internal and external customers. Quite
often, patient satisfaction scores in
specific departments fall below
expectations. In other situations,
small problems go unresolved and
escalate into large issues, requiring
a more extensive evaluation and
greater resources.
One of the reasons for these issues
involves a breakdown in communication and lack of transparent
accountability within the interdisciplinary team. Although staff members want to perform at a high level,
they are often following their job
description in a silo without recognizing the importance of seeing each
other as internal customers. They
may not be held accountable to meet
or exceed an internal customer’s
expectations.
The use of organizational huddles is
a method that can help every
department recognize their connection to each other and the impact
good interdisciplinary collaboration
and accountability can have on the
patient experience.
The Organizational Huddle
Process™, based on the work of

Healthcare Executive
nOv/DEC 2013

Organizational huddles improve teamwork
and patient care.

Margaret J. Wheatley, author of the
book Leadership and the New Science,
consists of a solution-focused circle of
representatives from different departments dedicated to making positive
changes within very short time
frames to improve interdisciplinary
teamwork and patient care. Wheatley
discusses the importance of how each
part of an organizational system is
connected, and, rather than trying to
control events, how we must learn to
effectively collaborate in real time in
an ever-changing environment. This
approach translates Wheatley’s
research into a very practical and
user-friendly model.
Implementing Organizational
Huddles
The following are basic requirements
for setting up organizational huddles
in your organization:
Establish pilot huddles. Start with
two to three patient care unit huddles. nursing leadership, in collaboration with their staff members,
decide which support departments
need to participate in their huddle
to help build the patient experience.
The decision of where to pilot this
process may be determined based
on any of the following criteria:
units that have strong leadership

and a high degree of confidence in
their ability to execute the model; a
desire to enhance inter-departmental
collaboration and accountability; or
a focus on improving patient satisfaction scores.

Organizational huddles
can build excellent
interdisciplinary
collaboration, enhance
accountability, prevent
problems from escalating,
and enhance both staff and
patient satisfaction.
Champion training. “Champions”
are managers or supervisors (usually a nurse manager, educator or
charge nurse) responsible for a
given department or unit. They
facilitate huddles, ensuring transparent communication and
accountability, build consensus,
This column is made possible in part
by ARAMARK Healthcare Technologies.

Healthcare Executive - November/December 2013

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