The scope of this includes all care providers: physicians, nurses, nurses’ aides, physician assistants, etc. Patients often do not judge clinical competence relative to professional standards, but various cues exist that indicate to the lay person the level of professional expertise.

Improvement Tips 

• Provide funding for continuing education for all staff members responsible for administering tests and treatments. Reward managers who effectively utilize their continuing education budget to improve the skills of staff members.
• Use seasoned staff who are adept at test or treatment areas to train other employees. Appoint a staff member to keep abreast of new techniques and research for each test/treatment area. This employee can then share his/her findings at unit or staff meetings. Schedule time once a week for this employee to do research. Consider sending this employee to at least one conference a year for further education.
• Add technical skills to staff reviews as appropriate. Make sure to break the skill set down into measurable behaviors (e.g., speed of treatment completion, are cleanliness protocols followed).
• Publicly reward and recognize those who are positively mentioned by name on the survey for this question. Provide extra training and constructive feedback for staff who need additional training.
• Read patient comments to identify who is doing well and who needs to improve. Look for patterns and train accordingly.

Forum Highlights

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Has Your Facility Undergone Construction Within the Past 12 Months?
Please vote and feel free to share any helpful or amusing stories. As always, thank you for posting.

Sorting Surveys by Attending MD
In our ongoing efforts to get ED physicians on board w/ patient sat issues, they have asked to see copies of their surveys sorted by attending MD. What's the best way to pull this data? I already create comment reports, but I think it would be worthwhile for them to see the surveys.

Patient Feedback
We have been running into the problem of receiving surveys back with lower scores than we would like to receive, but with very few comments about why the patient cannot rate us a five. Have any other facilities encountered this and how do you obtain that patient feedback about what they want? For example, one of our top priority index questions is "our concern for patient's privacy" - and we obviously want to work on that - but we don't really know what it means in the eyes of the patient. Are they upset because they feel like too much information is being given out by the reception area, are they concerned about confidentiality? We aren't sure what to focus on because we don't know why they are scoring us low. If anybody has input on this I would greatly appreciate it as we strive to have the best possible customer service to our patients. Thank you.

From Press Ganey Partners

Press Ganey Partners, Press Ganey’s bi-monthly client magazine, features best practices on patient, physician, and employee satisfaction, and safety culture as well as first-person customer success stories. If you do not currently receive the Press Ganey Partners, contact your Consultant

What's Really Important to Your Patients?
Results from the CAHPS-Hospital Survey (HCAHPS), released this past March, cast a public spotlight on exactly what patient think of their health care services. The public information has increased the urgency within many organizations to improve patient satisfaction. To read this article, click here