Patient Satisfaction - Coming to a Hospital Near You
Think back to the last time you or a loved one was hospitalized. Would the words “satisfied customer” come to mind? Considering your medical challenges, do you feel as if your hospital stay was as good as could have been expected?
Based on reports I get, few of us would ever report our hospital stays as much better than, “I made it out alive.” Granted, there are some patients who report good experiences. Most of them are women who have received maternity care, where a healthy newborn was the outcome. But remember, pregnant women enter the hospital healthy. Few others do.
Among those who have been hospitalized for illness, injury or surgery, it’s difficult to find a patient who doesn’t have legitimate complaints. From lack of communication, to medical errors, to acquiring infections, to being ignored when they ring the call button, to break-through pain, to lack of instructions at discharge, to being sent home too early, patients have complained for years about negative hospital experiences.
Of course, we know why the downward spiral has taken place. As budgets have become tighter, hospitals have had to squeeze their resources more and more. Further, in their quest to be more competitive, they have favored purchase of expensive equipment like surgical robots or digital imaging machines that can be used for marketing, over personnel who can actually solve patient problems. New toys are always flashier than fixing what’s broken.
But this tide of hospital problems may soon begin to turn. Through a new initiative aligned with the Affordable Care Act (healthcare reform), beginning in 2012, Medicare’s reimbursements to hospitals will be partially dependent on patient satisfaction scores, including bonuses that will be paid to the hospitals that show the highest rates of patient satisfaction.
The “winning” hospitals will be determined based on patient satisfaction surveys. Patients will rate how well their doctors and nurses communicated with them, how responsive hospital personnel were to the patients’ needs, how clean and quiet the hospital was, how well their pain was managed, and more. You can find a review of the survey questions here: http://bit.ly/ACAPatientSatisfaction
It’s a great start toward improving not just our satisfaction levels, but our overall care and outcomes, too. While it’s a shame that better communication needed to be legislated, this sort of win-win approach to care may drive other hospital initiatives that will save money and improve patient care in the future, too.
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ADDITIONAL RESOURCES ON THIS TOPIC
Medicare's List of Never Events (Errors it will no longer pay for.)
Choose the Best Hospital for You | 
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Trisha Torrey
is the author of
You Bet Your Life!
The 10 Mistakes
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Health Care You Deserve)
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exposé of the problems that
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