A MENTOR: A FRAMEWORK FOR EMPOWERING THE AMBULATORY CARE CLINICIAN IN PATIENT SATISFACTION

In the ambulatory healthcare care setting, patient satisfaction has been shown to impact perceived quality of care and patient outcomes. A review of literature demonstrates that while patient satisfaction measures are valuable, they tend to lack specificity. Patient concerns, however, provide insight into the particulars of the patient experience and create an opportunity for improvement. A MENTOR serves as the framework for this quality improvement project that aims to empower healthcare providers to anticipate and address expectations, manage the patient as a customer, establish rapport, negotiate and partner, treat the clinical and customer diagnoses, offer clarification, and recognize concerns and reinforce realistic expectations and solutions. In doing so, patient concerns can be mitigated before they occur through a process of prevention. Training was accomplished through a series of sequential face to face inservices, each focused on best practices around the management of billing, clinical, and facility related topics that make up the total patient experience. Both nurse practitioners and licensed vocational nurses were exposed to the A MENTOR training which was carried out over four sessions. A rise in self-reported confidence levels occurred following the completion of the series. Ultimately, the A MENTOR framework serves to support the enhancement of the health care provider’s customer service skills in the ambulatory care setting in order to enhance the patient-provider relationship. At the organizational level, A MENTOR is applicable, teaching all staff how to optimize the patient’s perception of their care which drives patient loyalty and positive outcomes