At the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, science and standardization are its keywords, as it sets in motion the early stages of a patient satisfaction overhaul. The 20-plus hospital system is six months into adopting a system-wide approach to improving patient satisfaction scores, a subject that can be a sticking-point for hospitals everywhere.
One of UPMC's goals in addressing patient satisfaction was to avoid the all-too-common shotgun approach to patient satisfaction improvement initiatives. Instead, it wanted to ensure its improvement tactics were strategic. To do this, the system turned to numbers. UPMC hired a statistician to analyze its HCAHPS scores and determine which areas of improvement would have the biggest positive impacts. The analysis identified the following five areas most ripe for improvement:
- Staff listen carefully to patient
- Staff treat patient with courtesy and respect
- Staff treat patient in a way that the patient can understand
- Staff kept pain well controlled
- Call button help came quickly
It is on these five points that UPMC is building a culture of satisfaction. To begin to improve these five areas, the system leveraged its existing patient experience work group composed of what it calls "patient experience advocates" to share and disseminate best practices throughout the systems. Staff members throughout all levels and various facilities within UPMC participated.
Patient experience advocate members are currently brainstorming best practices around these five areas. The advocates will divide up into five teams (one for each of the identified areas) and implement evidence-based practices to improve satisfaction in the identified areas.
For example, the advocates are considering recommendations that healthcare professionals sit when they visit patients, give each patient at least 20 seconds initially to speak and use scripts to address patient needs. Other recommended provider behaviors that the advocates may choose to disseminate include showing empathy for patients struggling with treatments, making expectations for treatment outcomes as transparent as possible and creating a “no pass zone” in which employees, no matter what their role, check on a patient who has pressed a call button.
While the framework of the program is still in progress, Jodi Butler, director of patient satisfaction at UPMC's Donald D. Wolff, Jr., Center for Quality, Safety, & Innovation, is confident that taking a scientific approach will yield reliable results. Ms. Butler says that the specific interventions will be intuitive, because caregivers are already overwhelmed with the number of tasks for which they are responsible. "These innovations have to be easy, reliable and spreadable. We want the patient to experience UPMC the same no matter where he or she is," she says.
Ms. Butler isn't surprised that many opportunities for improvement in patient satisfaction have to do with communication and making the patient feel heard. "We need to help patients lower their levels of anxiety by clearly managing the things they can't control," she says. "This is the subtle side of caring for patients. Satisfaction comes from the softer places: not methodology, not reconstruction, not food. What we're asking is for staff to be more present and be more attentive during patient interactions."
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