Using Small Step Service Design Thinking to Create and Implement Services that Improve Patient Care

Brenda Gleason () and Jennifer Bohn ()

A chapter in Service Design and Service Thinking in Healthcare and Hospital Management, 2019, pp 39-53 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Service design and service thinking in many industries concentrate on providing a competitive advantage. In healthcare, better service design focused on the patient and provider experience can also improve patient outcomes, for example, by ensuring healthcare regimens are followed. Improving patient care while concurrently minimizing costs requires both big leap and small step design thinking. Healthcare organizations that use service design and service thinking innovations are often touted for big leap, system-wide design innovations. While these types of big leap design change are important, small step design thinking can also help healthcare organizations make service changes with significant results. This chapter will present two case studies illustrating small step design thinking in healthcare. Small step service design focuses on processes that may seem routine or mundane but are integral to improving patient service experience and patient health outcomes. Examples include a patient appointment process that was designed to address research showing a patient is more likely to attend a clinical appointment if that appointment is set before the patient leaves the office of the current clinician visit and a design change at a city fire department that improved access and saved taxpayer dollars. These case studies will show how small step service design thinking can be used to achieve improved patient care and can be used by other healthcare organizations to guide their service thinking.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-030-00749-2_3

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783030007492

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-00749-2_3

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Springer Books from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().