Patient Experience at Nationwide Children's

Patient experience refers to the quality and value of all the interactions — direct and indirect, clinical and nonclinical — across the continuum of care. Patient experience can be tracked and measured many ways. One way that we measure patient experience is through patient satisfaction. To us, patient satisfaction means that we met the patient’s and/or family’s expectations. To collect and monitor patient satisfaction, we use Press Ganey and other survey tools. Additionally, we track patient experience outcome metrics throughout our hospital using various scorecards. Improvement initiatives related to these outcomes further enhance patient experience. Here are a few of the measures we utilize to track patient experience.

Improving Well Visit Completion at Nationwide Children’s Hospital’s Primary Care Centers

What Is the Project and Why Is It Important?

This project is important because it focuses on improving the number of well-child visits for young children. The goal is for patients to have six or more routine well visits by 15 months of age. These visits help doctors and nurse practitioners track a child’s growth and development, ongoing preventive care and vaccines (immunizations). This effort is part of the hospital’s Pediatric Vital Signs Preventive Care Index (PCI), which is focused on ensuring that children receive important preventive care.

How Are We Doing? 

The percentage of Primary Care Network (PCN) patients who are getting the recommended number of visits of six or more by 15 months of age has increased to about 61% in 2025, compared to about 59.5% in 2022. 

This improvement means that, over the past 11 months, about 1,000 more patients had six or more well visits by age 15 months than would have if no improvement was made.

Chart depicting primary care patients with 6 or more well visits completed by 15 months

What Are We Doing to Improve?

Targeted outreach and scheduling help to improve the target of six-visit completion by 15 months of age:

  1. Schedule future visits early. At the newborn visit, families schedule the 1-month and 2-month well visits. Families schedule the next well visit during the check-in process for additional visits up to 15 months of age.
  2. Increase MyChart enrollment. Families are encouraged to sign up for MyChart at the newborn visit. About 85% of patients are now enrolled. MyChart allows families to schedule or reschedule appointments online.
  3. Parent Coach Program: Parent coaches provide one-on-one support to patients and families with children from birth to 15 months. They join well visits and send weekly texts to support families.
  4. Help families who miss appointments. Staff reach out to families who missed their newborn appointment to get them scheduled.
  5. Reach out to families who are overdue for visits. Staff contact families when a child is overdue for a well visit starting at 4 months and for patients who were not scheduled at check-in.

How Can Patients and Families Help?

Patients and families play an important role in following preventive care recommendations and keeping up with well-child visits. They can help by:

  1. Scheduling and attending recommended well visits on time
  2. Keeping up with childhood vaccination schedules
  3. Communicating with care teams about things that make it hard to attend appointments
  4. Asking questions and being engaged with their child’s healthcare needs to ensure they are getting the right care at the right time, supporting healthy growth and development