Baton Rouge Hospitals Top Inpatient Satisfaction List on Louisiana Medical News

Baton Rouge Hospitals Top Inpatient Satisfaction List

By: TED GRIGGS

Dr. Ralph Dauterive, Ochsner Medical Center-Baton Rouge

Appointing consumers to patient satisfaction teams… Making sure the food is hot when it gets to a patient’s room… Taking the mystery out of knee replacement surgery with pre-op visits and educational materials.

These types of measures helped Baton Rouge-area hospitals reach the top spot in the nation for inpatient satisfaction at metro hospitals, according to healthcare consultants Press Ganey Associates Inc. The report covered nearly 3 million patients treated at 2,021 hospitals during 2008.

Achieving patient satisfaction starts with paying attention, said Dr. Ralph Dauterive, who heads the quality team at Ochsner Medical Center-Baton Rouge.

“It’s important to figure out what people want and what makes people satisfied as part of their experience in healthcare,” Dauterive said.

Ochsner, as well as other area hospitals, work hard to do that and then if necessary, alter the approach to keep patients “in a happier place,” Dauterive said.

The organizations that tend to have rising patient satisfaction are those that tried to answer their customers’ concerns and needs, he said.

The Press Ganey report found that the top areas for hospitals to improve were response to concerns/complaints, addressing emotional needs and including patients in treatment decisions. The report also found that patients over 80 and from 35-49 are among the least satisfied with their inpatient experience.

Terrie Stirling, chief operating officer of Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center, said one of the hospital’s biggest priorities in the patient satisfaction arena is keeping the patient informed and responding to patient requests and concerns.

“Because at the end of the day a hospital experience for a patient can be scary,” Stirling said.

Patients expect the right medicine and the right surgery, the things that are the science of what hospitals do, Stirling said. But the Lake’s research shows that patients compare their hospital stay to being at a hotel or at a Disney resort; their comments center around food and accommodations, things that are not a mystery to them.

That’s why the Lake has a class for patients who will be having knee or hip replacement surgery, Stirling said. The patients get a binder and a chance to talk to the nurses and therapists about their procedure; basically, the patients get an entire educational curriculum to prepare them.

The idea is to let the patients know, well ahead of time, just what their hospital experience will be like, Stirling said.

When a patient is in the intensive care unit, the Lake keeps family members informed by asking the family to choose one person to get the morning update, Stirling said. The designated family member gets a call between 6:30 a.m. and 7:30 a.m. from the nurse who cared for the patient, and the nurse tells the family member how their loved one did during the night.

Dauterive said the Press Ganey surveys are broken down into the various components of the hospital, with specific questions that let a hospital know when it’s hitting the mark and what areas need to be addressed.

“So we know the areas of the hospital where we’re doing better than the other areas,” Dauterive said. “We know the areas where we’re weak, and within those areas we know some of the things we need to work on to make it better, whether it’s the food needs to be hot enough when it arrives, or the nurses weren’t responsive enough on that unit during that stay.”

Armed with that information, a hospital can target the areas that can make the experience better for the next patient or group of patients, Dauterive said.

Lately, Ochsner has been focusing on its emergency department, and the length of time it takes a patient to see a doctor or have a test done, Dauterive said.

“And we’ve worked hard on our wait times. We basically publish our wait times on the Internet, 24 hours a day,” he said. “You can log on right now on the Ochsner Web site and figure out how long you’re going to have to wait at any of our emergency departments.”

On average, 93.5 percent of hospital patients in Baton Rouge said they received satisfactory care, according to Press Ganey. Columbus, Ohio, was next at 92.5 percent, followed by 90.3 percent in Oklahoma City.

The survey found that obstetrics/gynecology patients were the most satisfied with care among the major specialties. Intensive care and cardiology/coronary patients also rated their care highly. The Baton Rouge area hospitals include the Lake, Baton Rouge General, Woman’s Hospital, Ochsner, Earl K. Long Medical Center, St. Elizabeth Hospital in Gonzales and Lane Regional Medical Center in Zachary.

Dauterive said the area’s biggest healthcare facilities –the Lake, Baton Rouge General, Woman’s and Ochsner – are very patient-centered.

The hospitals want to make their process better and provide the best experience possible for their patients, Dauterive said. So they’re very concerned about healthcare quality and patient satisfaction.

“It all flows as one. That’s kind of what you get in a competitive environment,” Dauterive said. “Because you’re competing for the patient, you’re competing for the healthcare dollar so you want to create a healthcare environment that people want to come to, and when they need you they come.”