U.S. Hospitals Lag in Patient Satisfaction
You’ve seen the headlines and you’ve read the reports--U.S. Hospitals Lag in Patient Satisfaction! According to the October 30 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, patients surveyed complained of improper pain treatment and unclear discharge instructions. Consequently, re-hospitalization rates have skyrocketed, and less than 70% of patients would recommend the hospital where they were treated.
Guarded with this information, how can we better engage patients across the entire continuum of care? Talking to patients more frequently, clearly, and consistently by asking questions such as, “How are you feeling?” and “Do you understand your medications and discharge instructions?” will help demonstrate how we truly care about their experience during their hospital visit. Once they leave, we must go the extra mile and reach out again illustrating that we also care about their recovery at home.
I would like to start a dialogue and find out what programs you have in place to connect with patients post discharge.
Comments
We have a Follow-Up Call Team made of non-clinical staff who do an excellent job calling patients three days after discharge to ask if they understand their discharge instructions and a couple other select questions per nursing unit/dept that have high correlation to patient satisfaction....such as "safety and security", "nurses explaining things in a way they could understand" etc.... We have found this "real time" feedback to be extremely helpful in addressing post care issues and recognizing staff for being identified for remarkable customer service/care.
I am always curious when I hear that a hospital is performing post-discharge follow up calls with the nursing staff. Are the nurses receptive of the idea or do they see it as addtional burden? Are 100% of the patients called? Have you seen significant increases in satisfaction scores at the units that you are performing post discharge follow-ups. Has there been any resulting negative effects on the employee satisfaction scores? Any comments?
We make discharge calls to all our patients going home from inpatient. These calls are made by our Directors within two weeks of discharge to engage and "care". We also do discharge calls one day after Outpatient Surgery stating we are calling from Olympia Medical Center and their MD's name to follow up on their care. We have a script, but the conversation flows according to the information being shared. Anything clinical is referred to the MD or Nurse Manager.