Decade of Patient Experience Improvement at a Tertiary Care Urban Hospital.

Background And Objective: The purpose of this quality management study was to demonstrate how one hospital made a journey from average patient experience to become a regional leader in the experience of patient care for nationally recognized quality and safety metrics.

Methods: Saint Francis Hospital & Medical Center (SFHMC) located in Hartford, Connecticut, serves a diverse sociodemographic community as part of Trinity Health. "Recommend the Hospital" (RTH) has been the main marker of patient experience at SFHMC and Trinity Health across the United States as part of the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS).

Impact of a hospital unit-based leadership triad on key performance metrics.

We piloted a triad leadership model consisting of a unit-based hospitalist medical director, nurse manager, and case manager on five medical inpatient units. The purpose of this explanatory case study was to determine what, if any, impact the triad team would have on commonly measured operational and quality metrics: observed to expected length of stay, likelihood to recommend the hospital, hand-washing compliance, all-cause 30-day readmission rates, percent of discharges by noon, and percent of discharge to skilled nursing facilities. Over the course of a year triad units demonstrated improvement in most metrics in comparison to the baseline period.

A Multifaceted Approach to Improve Physician Communication Scores.

Improving patient satisfaction scores has become a key focus of health-care organizations nationwide but can be a struggle for community hospitals with constrained resources, and particularly challenging for hospitalist programs due to provider variance and turnover. Using the framework of appreciative inquiry, we implemented a multipronged intervention including a rounding model whereby hospitalist leaders rounded on patients and relayed commentary back to their hospitalist providers. We communicated positive feedback preferentially over negative feedback to the entire hospitalist group through regular communication.