As a traveling Patient Experience manager in 2023, Jood Ali made an unsettling discovery: She realized that nurses at one Washington state hospital didn’t know that a major change was about to occur, affecting every patient’s food service experience. Her solution not only fixed the problem but proved to positively impact working relationships with Nursing Partners at other Compass One hospitals, increasing patient satisfaction as a result. For example, the percentage of patients who rate their room as "always clean" at the Medical University of South Carolina- Orangeburg, jumped from 53% in August 2024 to 77% in November 2024 in response to this collaborative approach promoting thorough communication.
It started in August 2023,when the food service team at Providence Regional Medical Center in Everett, Washington, transitioned patients to bedside service, requiring them to order meals from their beds, replacing the old room service model. After learning that nurses were unaware of the change, Ali developed a plan to improve communication with nurses at Everett. It has since been tailored and implemented at three other health systems.
As a result of the program’s success, Ali was named the Bright Ideas winner for the last quarter of FY24, a quarterly award given by the Compass One Patient Experience Division.
“Jood’s outstanding work has increased collaboration among Compass One units at our hospitals while improving relationships with Nursing and helping patients have a better experience during their stay,” says Lindsey Cantu, patient experience – senior project manager for Compass One.
How Jood Ali’s Plan Works
Ali’s plan emphasized a month-long plan to engage and educate nurses, including:
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To generate interest among the Nursing team, Ali worked with Compass leaders to deliver a snack cart to Nursing daily for one month. When nurses arrived at the cart, she handed them a one-page fact sheet explaining the various services provided by Morrison or Crothall at a glance. To build stronger working relationships, she also had the Compass One leaders round on the units to engage with the nursing teams and others to answer questions about their support services.
“When we brought the snack cart to Nursing, we also brought managers from all Compass service lines to interact with Nursing,” Ali said. “They were able to speak with people who could help them and began to establish an important rapport that has long-term consequences.”
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To keep interest high, she offered 10 prizes as part of a raffle for all of the nurses who answered questions correctly about food service and EVS. The raffle generated more than 300 conversations with nurses, and the document was shared throughout the department.
When this practice was first implemented at Providence in Everett, it resulted in a smooth transition to the new food service model.
Expanding the Program
As Ali traveled to other hospitals over the next several months, she found nurses had similar experiences. They were sometimes confused about what services were provided by support teams and frustrated by a lack of communication.
Inspired by the success of the Providence project, she created a one-page fact sheet to include frequently asked questions and contact information, such as the escalation chart and call tree for the department.
The revised communications plan was rolled out at the University of Virginia in April 2024, AtlantiCare System in New Jersey in July 2024 and the Medical University of South Carolina-Orangeburg in October 2024.
To help ensure success, the Patient Experience team and Compass leaders rounded on nurses daily to discuss the support services provided and set clear expectations while building relationships.
“The responses were overwhelmingly positive, with frontline teams being so thankful to have their questions answered and the information at their fingertips,” Cantu says. “This was an incredibly vital asset for traveling nurses to quickly understand the support services available.”
The document served as a way to review the service style expectations with hospital staff and clarify the responsibilities of the support services to best collaborate with nurses in caring for the patients.
As nurses have become more aware of the food and environmental services, they now have more realistic expectations.
“The program's structure increased nursing engagement with the operations and strengthened the trust between the teams by building that relationship,” Ali says.
Because of these results, the document has since been recommended by the Customer Experience Design team in journey maps as an example of a best practice and shared with the Nursing Engagement team.
Ali, who is now a Senior System Patient Experience Manager at the University of Maryland Medical System, also recently received the Positive Impressions Champion award for her work.
“It’s exciting to be able to help our teams build stronger ties with hospital staff,” she says. “We know Nursing is critical to our success and the health of their patients.”
