Quick wins and staff training to improve the waiting experience
Waiting experience
UMC Utrecht
Waiting for your prescription to be filled can be a stressful experience and with long waiting times due to complex cases and processes, UMC Utrecht needed help improving the customer experience.
The in-house hospital pharmacy serves a varying customer base with different needs, so we designed an experience fit for purpose, implementing quick wins and staff training to ensure an efficient and less stressful experience for all.
 |
Duration |
| 3 months | |
 |
Tools |
| Data analysis | |
| Customer groups | |
| Quick wins | |
| Staff training |
Working with the team for solutions
At one of the largest university hospitals in the Netherlands patients were often surprised to find they had to wait for sometimes up to two hours at the pharmacy after their hospital visit.
To understand the situation, we dug deep into the current experience – looking at the existing processes, different types of patients and their needs, as well as the complexity of the polyclinic pharmacy and the needs of employees. We interviewed front-line staff, pharmacists, patients and doctors to understand the human aspect of the experience but also analysed the waiting time data available for key insights into peaks and trends.
From there, we gave the pharmacy staff important insights into the current bottlenecks and the different patient types in order to highlight opportunities for improvement. By further developing the experience through co-creation sessions with the pharmacy team, we introduced better visual communication in the waiting room, established more streamlined processes that differentiate between patient types and rolled out employee dialogue training. In the end, we successfully decreased waiting times and established a better patient experience for all.
Facts & figures
16
Hours observing in waiting area
6
Patient types
20+
Quick-wins
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