Geographic Rounding and Patient Satisfaction

Geographic rounding is often touted as a way by which healthcare team can communicate better among themselves and thus patient will get similar messages from all team members. Further, team members will appear to patient have strong team-work . Lastly, this will also allow healthcare team to spend more time with patients. Hence, patient satisfaction will increase. While it sounds reasonable in theory, there is little evidence supporting this logical sequence. Siddiqui et al examined this question in their recent study published in the Journal of Patient Experience.

Interestingly, they found that the patients cared for by geographically localized teams did not have better patient experience. They suggest that other factors such as physician communication skills may overshadow the impact of having localized teams. Obviously, further research is needed to better understand organizational, team, and individual factors impacting patient experience.