Leading public hospitals embrace patient-centric service model
Twenty local city-level hospitals have established patient experience departments to improve their health services, streamline the medical process, nurture relationships between patients and medical staff, and improve hospital management.
The patient-centric theory has been fundamental in the design and construction of new hospitals and renovation of older sites, achieving a patient-friendly environment through design and arrangements catering to patients, the elderly, children, and people with disabilities, and making the medical process more convenient.
A major change is that patients need not travel between different floors and buildings for different tasks, such as registration, seeing their doctor, receiving checks and paying the bill, as all relevant departments are in the same area, said officials from the Shanghai Hospital Development Center. The center has organized a series of hospital visits, events, and lectures throughout this year to showcase local leading public hospitals' efforts to improve the patient experience.
Shanghai General Hospital said its new comprehensive medical building has introduced a vertical design of all relevant departments to assist patients as much as possible.
The new building is home to three clinical centers – of ophthalmology, digestive diseases, and urology. Patients can complete all their medical procedures within a certain part of the building.
Shanghai General Hospital's new medical building boasts a patient-centric design.
Longhua Hospital established a comprehensive service center offering multiple functions, such as reservations, medical reports and record printing, consultations, medical insurance, and distributed the service into 37 small service centers all round the hospital to better convenience patients.
In addition to hardware, public hospitals are also focusing on details that help patients feel better.
Services such as parking reservations, unisex and accessible toilets, baby-feeding rooms, installation of bilingual guidance, and special services such as volunteers with sign language ability are being added continuously.
"Local public hospitals are turning the concept from a disease-based model to a patient-based model," said Zheng Ning from the hospital development center.
A volunteer (left) uses sign language to help a deaf patient communicate with a doctor at Huadong Hospital, which sets aside every Thursday afternoon as deaf patient-friendly time, when volunteers are available to assist deaf patients.
