Improving comfort in the nuclear medicine waiting area: A quality improvement initiative

Patient experience is a core dimension of healthcare quality and is associated with clinical outcomes, safety, and healthcare utilization. At a large academic medical center, nuclear medicine patients reported lower satisfaction with waiting area comfort compared with other radiology patients.

Press Ganey patient experience survey data demonstrated a 10.2-percentage-point gap in top-box scores for "comfort in the waiting area" for nuclear medicine patients (76%) compared with other radiology services (86.2%).

Using the Six Sigma DMAIC framework, a multidisciplinary team conducted Gemba walks, stakeholder interviews, and cause-and-effect analysis to identify drivers of dissatisfaction. Interventions targeted three key domains: privacy, communication about wait times, and physical comfort.

Interventions included relocating cardiac/stress test patients to a private waiting area, implementing pre-visit patient portal messaging to set expectations for wait times, and offering blankets at check-in to address temperature discomfort.

The top-box score for waiting area comfort improved from 76% to 85%, representing a 9.0-percentage-point absolute improvement (11.8% relative increase). The balancing measure, "wait time during check-in," remained stable (89% to 90%).

Low-cost, workflow-embedded interventions addressing environmental comfort, privacy, and communication significantly improved patient experience without adversely affecting operational efficiency. These findings demonstrate that targeted environmental and process changes can meaningfully enhance patient-centered care in diagnostic imaging settings.