Patient experience and satisfaction goes well beyond what happens in a radiology exam. It extends to the ease of scheduling, what happens in the waiting room and getting results in a timely fashion.

Innovation in those areas requires the right technology.

At the New York Medical Imaging Informatics Symposium, held Monday in New York City, hospital leaders locally and internationally spoke about how their facilities have tackled patient satisfaction, from refining the phone system to creating proprietary apps.

There’s a difference between patient experience and satisfaction, explained Dr. Keith Hentel, executive vice chairman of radiology at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital-Weill Cornell Medical Center and chair of the patient access and experience committee for the Weill Cornell Physicians Organization. Patient experience is a range of interactions – from being able to make appointments in a timely fashion to easy access to information. Satisfaction is whether a patient’s expectations were met.

“Two people can have the exact same care, but their patient satisfaction could be different because of the expectations they have about care,” Hentel said.

Hentel spoke about how NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital-Weill Cornell Medical Center has focused on recruitment of front-line staff and improved its phone system, using a VoIP system with call centers distributed around the city. The system also provides analytics, measuring call volume per full-time employee and critiques call center agents.

The hospital system has a 1 to 1.5 percent call abandonment rate, while the industry average is 5 percent, according to Hentel.

Hentel said the “secret sauce” is having a “very complicated but robust rules-based scheduling engine” with a list of constraints, such as that a contrast exam can’t be scheduled if there’s no physician coverage to monitor the patient, or having cardiac exams at a specific place and time, but if exams haven’t been scheduled 48 hours in advanced the slot will become available for other exams.

The facility is also looking into using online scheduling “bots”.

NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital-Weill Cornell Medical Center also compiles details about patients in a report, noting whether they’re claustrophobic or have metal implants. Patients fill out an online form with information before their visit and are given a QR code that they scan to check in.

“Having this information before a patient comes in is really important and allows you to act on it,” Hentel said.

The hospital has also focused on providing patients with information while they wait, and has video booklets on the MR experience that patients can watch before an exam, and LCD monitors in the waiting room that display photos of the nurses and technologists on duty.

Patients are also given tablets that alert them when it’s time for their exam so receptionists don’t have to shout out names. The patients can also use the tablets to send messages to the receptionists.

Patients get a survey from Rate My Hospital texted to them as they leave an appointment.

After the exam, the facility embargoes results in the patient portal so the provider can go over them, but that embargo period has been shortened to 48 to 72 hours, Hentel said.

Dr. Avez Rizvi, division chief of the Center for Medical Innovation, Software, and Technology (CMIST) at Sidra Medical and Research Center in Doha, Qatar, spoke about creating a culture of innovation with changes to patient wait times and in-house software creation.

For example, one doctor came up with an idea for patients to get a buzzer, as they would when waiting for a table at a restaurant, so they could walk around the hospital and visit its cafes instead of sitting in a waiting room. The system also tracks when patients arrive and how long it takes until they are seen.

Sidra also created a smartphone app for pregnant women called 10 Moons that helps expectant mothers track their pregnancy with a guide on fetal development, nutrition advice and information related to their care, including access to 3D ultrasounds.

“There are areas where you can take risk without affecting patient care,” Rizvi said.