Impact of Inpatient Unit Design Features on Overall Patient Experience and Perceived Room-Level Call Button Response.

This study explores the relationship between inpatient unit design and patient experience and how spatial features and visibility impact patients' perception of staff responsiveness. The first part of this study is a retrospective pre-post and cross-sectional study evaluating the impacts of unit design on patient experience at the unit level. This study compares patient experiences based on Press Ganey and HCAHPS surveys in two orthopedic units (existing unit in Atrium building and new unit in Tower) with differing design features at Rush University Medical Center.

Efficacy of a Transition Clinic on Hospital Readmissions.

Background: A primary care-staffed transition clinic is one potential strategy for reducing 30-day re-admissions for patients without an established primary care physician, but the effectiveness has not been studied. The objective was to test whether patients who completed a postdischarge transition clinic appointment were less likely to be readmitted within 30 days.

Methods: This retrospective cross-sectional study included adults with Medicare or Medicaid coverage who were discharged from general medicine units at Rush University Medical Center between October 2013 and October 2014.

Patient satisfaction in pay for performance programs.

Concerns about both the cost and quality of health care have led to a growing interest in, and call for "pay for performance." Increasingly, as well, patient satisfaction is being viewed as an essential aspect of care that should be considered in judging performance. At the same time, there are concerns about the validity of patient satisfaction as a relevant quality measure.

The academic medical center and patient satisfaction.

Because of size, organizational complexity, departmental autonomy, and tensions among teaching, research, and the daily work of healing, academic medical centers face significant challenges in establishing a culture of patient satisfaction. At the same time, some of these characteristics may aid academic medical centers in efforts to initiate and sustain programs focused on enhancing the patient's experience of care. If successful in these efforts, academic medical centers could be the ultimate legitimizers of patient satisfaction as a key element of quality clinical care.

The measure of quality.

Reflecting an exploding interest, in performance measurement, various state, federal, and commercial entities are calling for public reporting on hospital quality. A number of measures are currently being developed or tested. Lacking, however, is a consensus about the properform and function of health care quality measures.