Exclusive Interview: Dr Paul Brigino, COO, Our Lady of Caysasay Medical Center, the Philippines
How this Philippine private hospital is putting patient experience first.
This year the vision is to become a model hospital in the country, in terms of quality operations and services that we can give to the community. At the same time, we are continuously trying to improve our patient care in terms of hospital operations, innovation, and making things more efficient.
How have you made patient experience a priority in your hospital?
Role playing is very important to me right now, especially for the nursing service - in every step, every procedure of each and every transaction, in every department. Because I want to make sure that what we do meets the expectations of each patient.
We also have a total quality manager to see to it that every procedure have been performed in a very set way. It is not only on the outpatient basis but also patients being admitted in hospital. There will never be discrepancies in any of the tasks carried out for the patient.
And in the nursing service every morning, we make sure that the task given to each and every person on duty must be listed. We have what we call an Accountability Board, with tasks for the day and how they should be executed. We have been using this system for over a year now.
Once a task is done, we make sure that it is marked as completed before the nurse finishes their shift - even in the ancillary department, like the medics and pharmacists. That is the only way that we can make patient experience very possible for us.
What are the challenges that you are facing today?
I am focusing now on streamlining and strengthening business processes and policies for patient-doctor; management-doctor; and hospital-client relationships. We are looking at doing this for each and every department of the hospital to improve our patients’ comfort and convenience, making things easy and comfortable for them.
Similarly, we want to make our transactions more efficient so that patients will not experience delays in receiving documents or information.
[blockquote]Another challenge is to support our doctors so that they can efficiently manage and treat their patients at the right time, in the right place, at the right moment.[/blockquote] Another challenge is to support our doctors so that they can efficiently manage and treat their patients at the right time, in the right place, at the right moment. And we still have to enhance our business processes based on the quality standards that the hospital should perform.
How are you using technology to improve patient experience?
What we want to have right now is convenience in terms of booking doctor appointments. Doctors will have convenience in giving orders to the patient, and the patient will know the treatment allotted for them.
I want to develop something that will make our clients reachable even outside the hospital by enhancing our technology, most especially for the doctors and their respective patients.
All our ancillary services are using automated machines, which make it easier for us to transact with our patients. There is lesser time that has been spent delivering healthcare services on the administrative side. What’s more, the operational expense is much lesser compared to previous years.
I hope to empower all employees to share and contribute how we can make things very easy for our clients, young and old alike.
What else are you working on that you are excited about?
We are using social media to reach out to the community, from the schools to households. It is not enough for me just to be curative. For me, prevention is much more important.
That's why there are teams in the hospital that visits schools and communities to run wellness education programmes. As long as there is a healthy community, there will be a healthy economy.
I also hope to implement the MEN framework in my hospital - it stands for Motivation, Equipping and Nurturing. Soon enough, we can offer a One Stop Shop package of quality healthcare, both for the management, and the end user. That is the totality of what the care delivery system is about.