Customer Service

Patient Satisfaction Improvements

Listening to patients.  It seems like a simple concept, but a very important one which CMMC tries to pay attention to in a number of ways.  Each patient who is an inpatient receives a patient survey when they return home.  Eachquarter over 500 people choose to return their surveys and the President, Laird Covey and the Guest Relations Coordinator, Jeri Maurer read each one. We get hundreds of positive comments each quarter which we pass on to staff to thank them for the hard work they do.

But what about patients who have suggestions for how we can be a more compassionate hospital?

One process we actively work on is any trends or themes in the responses that patients share with us.  The survey company who helps us with this process is able to tell us how we are doing when compared with the 900+ hospitals that are also using this survey.  This company is also able to tell us which of the 60 questions asked on the survey are the most important to our patients in terms of overall satisfaction with the care received. Through the years three questions have come up as being the most important: 1)staff sensitivity to the inconvenience of being hospitalized , 2) staff respond to my emotional/spiritual needs and 3) staff respond to my concerns and complaints.

Once we realized how important these issues were and that they appeared to be much more important than any of the other questions, we decided to do something to help staff with these areas.  Five years ago we began to offer any staff member who wants to be involved the possibility of attending a 4 day intensive workshop on spirituality which looks at many issues.  In this workshop called RENEW staff are able to work together in a reflective atmosphere on questions about life issues – what to do when a patient asks hard questions such as “why is this happening to me?”, “am I going to die?”, “how will I have the strength to survive the challenge that life has thrown at me?”.   Other issues beyond dealing with loss and grief are how to deal with anger, anxiety, and resentment.

We have realized as nursing staff , doctors, social workers, lab staff, doctor’s office staff and others have attended this that it is a very important thing we are offering. Staff really do come away feeling renewed in their passion in caring about patients.  Our patient surveys show that it has made a difference.  Within 6 months of offering this workshop for the first time, nursing scores on the patient survey put them in the 99%tile when compared to the other 900+ hospitals in the country.  They have remained in the high 90’s for almost every quarter of reporting ever since.  Our overall scoring in general also went up. 

Listening to patients – it’s an important thing we try to do each day.