By Hannah Fell, Digital Managing Editor

Jennifer Bouchard became a registered nurse with a BSN in 2005. Since then, she has gotten her MSN and MBA and, most recently, had the opportunity to work at a startup outpatient wound care clinic with a local hospital. It was through her experiences in that position that led to her research, which she showcases in a poster at SAWC Spring 2023. Currently, Bouchard said she sees all types of wound care patients with multiple comorbidities. Although her clinic had worked on ways to ensure time and space to see every patient, they faced the common roadblock of most facilities post-COVID-19 — a limited amount of room and time to serve everyone. It was often noted that new patient visits could take 90 minutes, and follow-up visits could take over an hour. As a result, Bouchard stated that the clinic made changes in its workflow, which, in turn, helped not only increase the number of patients they could see but also decrease patient wait time. “Now we're up to 40 patients a day, [and] 8 hyperbarics,” she said. “And we have absolutely no wait time.”

Her poster “The Outpatient Wound Center Covid-19 Precautions: Causing Increased Efficiency In Workflow Resulting In Increased Patient Satisfaction” presents the methods that Bouchard and her team took to achieve increased patient satisfaction "by 14% with scores in the upward 90th percentile," how they achieved improved patient visit times by almost 50% and achieved "a Tier 1 designation" for employee satisfaction.¹ She said it took a team to reach the point that they are at today, and she hopes clinicians can take what she's learned from her experience and put it into practice at their workplace, too. “[Through] changing the workflow, listening to the patient, and listening to my staff, we were able to create a workflow to allow our community to have… good care and no wait time,” she said.

References

1. Bouchard J, Stephens, J. The Outpatient Wound Center Covid-19 Precautions: Causing Increased Efficiency In Workflow Resulting In Increased Patient Satisfaction. Poster presented at The Symposium on Advanced Wound Care; April 26-30, 2023; National Harbor, MD.