Primary Care Patients’ and Staff’s Perceptions of Self-Rooming as Alternative to Waiting Rooms

Abstract

PURPOSE Most patients are escorted to exam rooms (escorted rooming) although patients directing themselves to their exam room (self-rooming) saves patient and staff time while increasing patient satisfaction. This study assesses patient and staff perceptions after pragmatic implementation of self-rooming. METHODSIn October-December 2020, we surveyed patients and staff in 25 primary care clinics after our institution expanded self-rooming from 4 specially built clinics during the COVID-19 pandemic. Semi-structured surveys asked about rooming process used, rooming process preferred, and perceptions of self-rooming compared with escorted rooming. RESULTSMost patients (n = 1,561) preferred self-rooming (86%), especially among patients aged <65 years and in family medicine clinics. Few patients felt less welcomed (10.6%), less cared about (6.8%), more isolated (15.6%), more lost/confused (7.6%), or more frustrated (3.2%) with self-rooming compared with escorted rooming. Early-adopter clinics that implemented self-rooming ≤2016 had even lower rates of patients feeling more isolated, lost/confused, or frustrated with self-rooming compared with escorted rooming.Over one-half of staff (n = 241; 180 clinical, 61 nonclinical) preferred self-rooming (59%) and thought most patients liked self-rooming (65.8%), especially among clinical staff and in early adopter clinics (≤2016). Few staff reported worse waiting times for patients (12.4%), medical assistants (MAs) (15.9%), and clinicians (16.4%) or worse crowding in waiting areas (1.7%) and hallways (10.1%). Unlike patient-reported confusion (7.6%), most staff thought self-rooming led to more patient confusion (63.8%), except in early-adopter clinics (44.4%).CONCLUSIONS Self-rooming is a patient-centered innovation that is also acceptable to staff. We demonstrated that pragmatic implementation is feasible across primary care without expensive technology or specially designed buildings.

COVID-19 and Primary Care: Taking Stock

“…In a study from Wisconsin, Ramly et al used survey methods to show that during the pandemic, patients preferred to find their own way to their allocated examination room ("selfrooming") than sit in a waiting room before being escorted to the examination room. 19 Staff vastly underestimated levels of patient satisfaction with self-rooming and overestimated levels of patient confusion. This simple change has potential to reduce nosocomial infection, though the study was not designed to demonstrate that impact directly.…”