Our Patient GPS

Volunteers help patients find their way. It’s part of our Patient-Centered Experience.

When you travel, getting from point A to point B is easier than ever. Need directions? Find them on the Internet. Need an alternate route? Refer to the GPS (global positioning system) on the dash.

Now we’re making it easier for patients and visitors to get from point A to point B inside our hospitals. It’s one of seven projects under way as part of the Patient-Centered Experience (PCE) 2016—our 10-year initiative to enhance all patients’ experiences in the network.

A team of 13 colleagues, led by Craig Onori, vice president, support services, took an in-depth look at the network’s “GPS” and found better (and budget-friendly) ways for patients to find their destinations.

Joe Kloiber

Map Drive
Even before people leave their homes, they can download directions to and maps of each of our hospitals at lvh.org. The navigation team worked with public affairs colleagues to create maps of each campus—including the new Kasych Family Pavilion at LVH–Cedar Crest—in English and Spanish. They include symbols that coordinate with signs on each campus. Doctors’ offices are distributing them to patients.

In addition, volunteers are writing directions to and from frequent destinations for security and information desk colleagues to hand to patients and visitors (so they don’t have to memorize verbal directions).

Ambassador Alley
Every Tuesday at 5 a.m., Howard Southard (right) begins greeting patients at LVH–Cedar Crest and escorting them to admissions for same-day surgeries. When necessary, he helps patients, like Ivan Strader of Allentown, who need wheelchairs. More than 15 years ago, volunteers began providing this early-morning service for patients. “The other day I escorted so many people at once it filled three elevators,” says Southard, who volunteers in the same role at a Florida hospital during the winter.

This concept is now expanded into a new lobby ambassador program. Beginning at LVH-Cedar Crest, the lobby will be staffed with volunteers to help people get where they need to go and back again. “People come through our doors completely overwhelmed,” says team member Betty Anton, volunteer services director. “Lobby ambassadors take away the stress of figuring out where they need to go.”

Art Kyle

Valet Way
When the Center for Advanced Health Care opened last year, there were no plans for valet parking. But more and more patients asked for it. “So we shifted some staff around in order to provide the service,” Onori says. Valet parking remains at the main lobbies of all three hospital campuses and at the emergency department and Cancer Center at LVH–Cedar Crest.

Bob Bodner

Horizon Street
To help patients and visitors find their way, the team is proposing kiosks where visitors could look up directions to their destinations within our hospitals. The kiosks would be placed in the lobbies and available around-the-clock. (The PCE Patient Advisory Council, comprised of community members, suggested sanitary wipes be available to clean the kiosks’ touch screens.) There is no funding stream for PCE projects. So to help support projects like this, PCE leadership has applied for a grant. Next, the navigation team plans to work with a signage consultant to improve signs throughout the network—and coordinate the new signs on the exterior of the buildings with those on the interior.

Our navigators
Joe Kloiber, Art Kyle and Bob Bodner know the halls of LVH–Cedar Crest like the back of their hands. For years, they have volunteered their time to escort patients and visitors from the main lobby to wherever they go. Their roles have evolved into a new lobby ambassador program, in which volunteers like themselves will use maps, valet parking and other services to help others navigate our campuses.

If you see a patient or visitor who appears to be lost or confused, offer to help. More often than not, people don’t want to ask for directions. So be the first to offer assistance. For a copy of maps to help guide patients and visitors, call 610-402-CARE or visit lvh.org/checkup.

—Sally Gilotti

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