March 9, 2018 | (2) Comments

One thing I really appreciate about having a blog is that it gives me another place to hear from you. Believe it or not, I read every comment. Sometimes I reach out to employees to address questions and concerns. Other times I reach out to my leaders and ask them to address a concern. But whether you hear from me directly or not, I’m always reading, always listening and thinking about what you’ve shared. So hearing your voice on the blog is invaluable to me.

My last blog post about parking and patient access generated many comments from employees about our shuttle services and employee parking. I took your comments to heart, and I immediately reached out to the leadership that oversees these areas. They were just as concerned about the issues that surfaced and provided some immediate feedback, which I’m sharing below.

In addition, some of your questions and thoughts have immediately set the wheels in motion for us to look into additional solutions. We will follow up with those plans in the weeks to come. But for now, here are some things I’d like you to know:

After-hours parking

  • Garage 16: After-hours employees who work in West Tower, Abercrombie, Feigin or Wallace Tower have access to Wallace Tower/Garage 16 on weekends. You may enter Garage 16 between 6 p.m. Friday and 4 p.m. Sunday. Employees will need to exit Garage 16 by 8 a.m. Monday to ensure capacity for our patients and visitors on Monday morning. Garage 16 is not available for after-hours parking on holidays that fall on weekdays.
  • Texas Medical Center garages: After-hours employees have access to Texas Medical Center garages between 6 p.m. and 8 a.m. on weekdays and holidays. You also have access on weekends between 6 p.m. Friday and 8 a.m. Monday.

Shuttles

  • Additional circulator shuttle: Thursday morning, we reached out to the Texas Medical Center and immediately received approval to add another circulator shuttle during our non-peak hours (approximately 10 a.m. – 3 p.m.). This additional shuttle was added today. We will continue to look at other options for shuttle stops.
  • Shuttle hotline: You can provide feedback about the shuttles at any time by using the shuttle hotline. Simply call 832-824-2666. Our leaders pay attention to the hotline messages, they constantly monitor ridership, delays and route adjustments, and they make every attempt to respond to and/or resolve issues that are brought to our attention.

Signage

We are making improvements regarding signage and wayfinding inside our buildings, and we are also working on exterior wayfinding. You will begin to see additional signage in the coming weeks.

Parking costs

Texas Children’s is one of the last organizations in the Texas Medical Center that still offers paid parking for its employees.

 

I hope you find this information useful, and again, I always appreciate hearing from you. I care about how the decisions we make impact our staff and employees, and hearing from you provides me with insight and other points of view.

By the same token, I do indeed want us to continue keeping our patients and their families in mind. Always consider what simple thing you might do to help ensure our patients have the access and exceptional experience they deserve every time they are with us.

March 6, 2018 | (91) Comments

So let’s say you take your family out for dinner. You’ve picked a great new restaurant, and the food is delicious, the ambiance is perfect, but the wait staff is a bit rude. Well, no matter how great the food is, what are the chances that you’re going to go back? Probably pretty unlikely – right?

Well, our patients and families choose to seek care at Texas Children’s because they know without a doubt that we provide the best quality of care! We have the best and brightest people in the world taking care of their loved ones. However, once they walk through the doors, patients and families evaluate us based on the quality of the service they receive. A big part of that quality of service begins before they even walk through our doors. For many of our patient families, that experience begins with something that should be relatively simple – convenient parking.

When we design and construct our buildings, we include ample parking for our patient families as well. But lately many of our patient families have been unable to find parking in the garages at our Medical Center Campus. That happens in some part because Texas Children’s employees are occupying spaces that have been designated for patient families or are using the valet services intended for our patient families.

Just two weeks ago, Security turned away 51 employees trying to park in Garage 21. That would have been 51 patient families that would have been frustrated or inconvenienced. This ongoing concern has created an overwhelming burden on our patient families who come to Texas Children’s for their care. A couple of comments from a recent Press Ganey survey:

“Parking is terrible. I almost missed an appointment due to waiting 16 minutes just to get into the parking garage and another 15 to 20 minutes to park, as the garage was full.”

 “Parking our vehicle was a nightmare. We spent over an hour trying to get a parking spot.”

 As part of Texas Children’s Step Up for Patients First initiative, we encourage our employees to live compassionately and put our patients and their families first. A simple way to do this includes giving families priority access to parking to help ensure they get to their children’s clinical appointments on time.

Using the limited parking reserved for our patient families is counter to the experience we are all committed to providing them. It also disregards Texas Children’s Parking Policy, which prohibits employees from parking in Texas Children’s Hospital garages 12, 16 or 21 or using valet services when you are here for work purposes. To ensure employees understand this policy and the desire of Texas Children’s to put patients and families first, Security will continue to conduct random monitoring and take appropriate steps to correct this practice.

Having free, dedicated employee parking garages (garages 14 and 19) at the Meyer Building and a large, frequently circulating fleet of employee shuttles provides all employees with convenient alternatives to the limited parking on the Medical Center Campus, which is the only option for our patient families and visitors. Coming to the world’s largest medical center and navigating a parking garage, especially with the temporary closures due to our current construction, is difficult enough for families. Let’s do all we can to ease the experience.

We can create a better experience for patient families and visitors by parking in the designated employee garages so that finding parking is the least of their concerns. It’s a simple step that will have a lasting impact on a family’s experience with us.

December 11, 2017 | (31) Comments

One of the most frequent calls I get is from a concerned parent asking for my assistance to get an appointment for their child. On August 1, I held a meeting to discuss patient access and scheduling at Texas Children’s. I heard from each member of my leadership team and was advised that they receive calls for assistance every day. Did you know that we have nearly 100 distinctive sites that schedule patients and approximately 600 FTEs dedicated to this extremely decentralized process? This issue is extremely widespread across our system and it isn’t just A problem at Texas Children’s – it is THE problem at Texas Children’s.

I appointed Dr. Larry Hollier, Associate Surgeon-In-Chief and Richelle Fleischer, Senior Vice President of Revenue Cycle to co-chair a task force to study and make recommendations on how we can significantly enhance the patient scheduling process throughout the Texas Children’s enterprise. That multi-disciplinary task force has been hard at work, and I want to thank them, our nursing and medical staff leadership, and our In-Chiefs for all of their support and hard work. In addition, I know you are all aware that I have made access and patient scheduling a goal for the organization this year.

I’d like to share the thoughts from the mother of one of our Texas Children’s patients. She has a chronically ill child and every time she wants to get an appointment for her child within the Texas Children’s system, she takes a deep breath, says a prayer for her own patience and for that of whomever might be at the other end of the phone at Texas Children’s. She mentally prepares “to go to war.”

This is exactly what many of our families face when they attempt to get their children here to receive the care they need. And those words – “go to war” – those really are the words we heard from a frustrated, yet determined mom simply seeking the best for her child. Sadly, she is not alone. In a recent patient access survey, “frustrated” was the word families most frequently used to describe our scheduling process. Should it be that hard? Should a family already stressed by a health issue be further challenged by our system? No, it should not be that hard.

We are so much better than this, and we can do better. We pride ourselves on being the best at what we do and providing exceptional care. But if our expertise is locked behind a maze of limited availability and complicated processes that vary from service to service, we end up denying care to those who need us most. We can work smarter and more efficiently to do the most basic thing our patients and their families expect of us – we can open the door to our system and make it easier to get inside.

Fortunately for us, we already have the tools and technology in place to more than meet our patient families’ needs. What’s actually more critical to effect the changes we need is a shift in the way we think and a willingness to move out of our comfort zones and to do what’s necessary to make getting here easier for our families. Truly caring for our patients means being attentive to every element of their experience with us. In this case, it means we must change the way we do some things.

A few weeks ago, I emailed you about our FY2018 goals. As an organization, we are focusing on four priorities: Access, Care Coordination, Quality and Finances. In a few weeks, we will be making some changes specifically targeting the access challenges. Although we have leaders working diligently on the issue of access daily, I want everyone at Texas Children’s thinking about this. What can you do to help families get into our door? No one knows our system as well as you do, so when an idea hits you, I want to know … leave me a note below.

Demand for our care and services is ever increasing. The wisest thing we can do to ensure the health and future of Texas Children’s is to maintain the respect and reputation we have earned. Our goal is to exceed our families’ expectations. And being the one amazing team we are, I know we can do this. We must.