National Capital Region Market Digital Patient Guidebook Toolkit

The National Capital Region (NCR) Market has developed this digital toolkit to communicate with active duty members and eligible beneficiaries about the availability of the NCR Patient Guide. The NCR Market Patient Guide will assist in navigating the NCR Market integrated care network. The toolkit provides information and resources to conduct a local education campaign for active duty members and eligible beneficiaries in your geographic area about services throughout the network.

Background

Patient satisfaction is an NQF priority and is an important measure of healthcare effectiveness. In late summer 2020, the Clinical Optimization Team sought to better understand the overall quality of the patient experience with front desk staff, across all NCR military hospitals and clinics (also known as military treatment facilities or MTFs), and explore patient encounters. This effort resulted in the NQR Experience Office embarking on a project to: Understand the patient experience when interacting with an MTF counter; identify underlying factors of influence across all clinical facilities and define front desk variables, processes and best practices in order to identify successful approaches to patient engagement within the MHS and private healthcare systems.

The team found that within our NCR Market network of care that includes 32 MTFs, 11 dental treatment facilities serving more than 270,000 enrollees, some active duty members and eligible beneficiaries entering the NCR market find it challenging to effectively manage their health care to manage. Therefore, the NCR Market Digital Patient Guide was created to introduce all new/current ingredients to the NCR Market construct and to optimize the beneficiary experience.

This collaborative effort is coordinated with the NCR PAO, NCR Market MTF Leadership, Patient Experience & Relations offices, MTF Chief Medical Officers, and Defense Health Agency. The NCR Market Guidebook will serve as an onboarding and reference guide to help patients navigate the NCR Market healthcare experience and will be updated every 6-12 months based on relevant feedback and new information available to share .