Who Are Your Key Stakeholders?

Every facility compiles a project committee or task force based on its own needs and talents. This should include a core group of people who have the interest and time to invest over the long haul, plus others who are asked to join at and for specific phases of the project. As a group, the committee can then reach out for a wayfinding design consultant, who can help it define and refine a program that will meet the organization’s specific needs.

There are no hard and fast rules about who should be tapped, but it will be hard to carry out the necessary work of the committee with fewer than four or more than 12 members in the core group. The following areas and disciplines are excellent places to look for committee members, starting with the C-suite.

Administration. It’s critical that administration buy into the idea of providing a comprehensive wayfinding system, dedicated to improving patient throughput and satisfaction. With limited time, the hospital or system’s top leaders will probably not chair the group or even attend every committee meeting after a while. However, they do need regular two-way communication with the group, and someone from or with the ear of the C-suite should head things up at least until the plan has taken shape. Often this is the COO, or the director of engineering.

Engineering/building and grounds services. Charged with the thankless job of keeping the entire campus fresh and well maintained, these are the people on everyone’s speed dial. Their perspective and involvement is essential in establishing viable parameters for the program and in its successful implementation.

Information technology. What will work with the organization’s current and anticipated hardware and software – and what might interfere with the systems in use? The IT department will make sure you are headed down a clear path.

Admitting. Policies, procedures, and staffing levels will affect who needs to go where and when. Some facilities use Entrance A for admitting from 6 am to 8 am, Entrance B from 8 am to 5 pm, then the emergency department from 5 pm to 6 am The question is how this information is communicated and how likely that is to change.

Nursing. Understaffed and overworked, nurses do not need to add guide to their job description. The way patients and visitors experience the organization is one of nursing’s top priorities, and effective wayfinding frees caregivers to focus on caregiving.

Marketing and communications. As guardians of the corporate brand and standards, identity and image, these departments have a huge stake in seeing to it that signage does its part to promote individual products and services -- including those off-campus components that can feel like stepchildren -- along with the facility as a whole.

Translation services. For people whose English cannot be relied on to give or receive crucial medical information, the last thing they need is to get lost in your facility. This department is responsible for seeing to it that the wayfinding program works to get them where they need to go, quickly and safely.

Business office. The organization’s revenue stream flows through this office, so wayfinding procedures, policies, and signage need to work together to ensure patients easy access.

Food services. As well as a source of welcome sustenance to anxious people (who are not quite the captive audience they use to be), the facility’s cafeterias, snack bars, and coffee shops are, ideally, also profit centers. Ask anyone who owns a restaurant if it’s important that their clients be able to locate them, navigate through the menu, and get the food they want when they want it.

Volunteer services. Volunteers are often the first representatives of the organization visitors encounter. These are helpers by nature: If not properly trained in the art of giving directions, they will use their own method -- sometimes good, sometimes bad, rarely consistent. They also are a great grassroots resource for identifying problems in patient flow.

The foundation. Chances are your hospital seriously needs the funding and community support its foundation provides. That means that your wayfinding program will need to gracefully incorporate donor recognition messages in ways that honor the donors without undercutting program standards.

Physicians. Here is the real lifeblood of your facility. Get key physicians engaged and the whole program takes on a higher profile.

Purchasing and materials management. A carefully devised plan that cannot be implemented is worse than useless, which is why these people are so important. Purchasing will have a lot to say about how the program is implemented and what cost center will pay for it, while materials management will need to contribute their resources and expertise in procurement. Astute buyers understand that wayfinding elements are not off-the-shelf commodities and that printers, for example, have other priorities than your floor plan sitting on their press. They also will realize that the old practice of bidding everything won’t necessarily work well in this context: If it takes 4-5 weeks to investigate a request and issue a purchase order, out-of-date signs are going to stay up just that long. Establishing a standard price list, blanket purchase orders, and a strong relationship with a reliable source can streamline the process big time.

Project Leadership

Your project needs both a committee chair and a project manager; in all likelihood, these are two different people. Again, the chair needs to either be in the C-suite or have direct access to it, in order to deal effectively with the politics of the situation, set direction, and identify funding sources. This means he is unlikely to have the time or manual skills to be the hands-on, “go to” person. Someone else needs to step forward and agree to be the “sign person” – the program champion, liaison to department heads, continuity manager.

So if, for example, the COO or director of purchasing takes the helm at the start and sees the project through the planning and design development phases, he will probably ask someone else to pick up the reins when it’s time to implement those plans and designs – maybe someone in maintenance or housekeeping, for example. That’s your project leader.

Keep in mind that the project manager is the person whom everyone will call when a new sign is needed – forever -- and who will have to tell the unit secretary on 3E why she can’t have her name on that sign. So this must be someone who knows how to get things done and works well with others: a doer and a diplomat.

Committee Links

Your committee will want to have strong working links to other committees with related concerns. This can be accomplished through periodic invitations to attend each other’s meetings, designation of official liaisons, regular reports, and/or making overlap appointments. Groups that might make an important contribution to the wayfinding initiative include the following standing committees:

Patient Experience Team. It is the job of this group to step back and see the place as outsiders see it. This includes not just patients and their families, but a broader spectrum of customers: visiting clinicians, current and potential employees, and community representatives, among others. Is ease of navigating your facility a factor in their satisfaction, or dissatisfaction? Just ask them.

Patient throughput committee. These people may equal or exceed your enthusiasm for getting patients to their procedures on time; every time a piece of expensive equipment sits idle or a staff schedule is disrupted because a patient is running late, the failure is theirs. It is to their advantage to make sure your wayfinding program starts before that patient arrives at the facility. For example, the reminder phone call the day before a person’s appointment – and the preadmission package that gets mailed -- can easily include directions about which entrance to come to, where to park, and how to find the exam room.