Over the years PVHS has worked hard to maintain high patient satisfaction ratings. Keeping people happy while they are in a hospital is a tricky business…unless they’re in the obstetrical ward, when they are always just happy for some reason! 
Keeping patients satisfied is a full effort on the part of every member of the staff. We have learned a lot about how to do this, but we have learned the most from Quint Studer, who I think has patient satisfaction techniques down pat! From making sure that every person, clinician or not, who goes into a room of a patient makes sure to ask that patient what else they might need, to walking people to their destination when they are lost (as opposed to just pointing), these types of efforts make a huge difference in making what can be a tough time in a hospital much more tolerable.
We recently pulled up the publically available Medicare database which keeps track of patient satisfaction for all hospitals in the country, and created a comparison for our organization and others. As you can see, Poudre Valley Health System continues to be a national leader in patient satisfaction. We actually have people regularly come to visit us and find out what we are doing that allows such consistent high performance, and we are thrilled to have them.
The list for the most recent Baldrige award recipients follows:
2009 HCAHPS data from Malcolm Baldrige recipients
In this chart you can see that compared to other Baldrige Award recipient organizations, PVHS facilities compare favorably. I would argue that this is because the long time spent training and preparing and working to make the patient stay a comfortable experience. The people at PVHS have literally spent thousands of hours learning how to better meet the needs of those we serve.
However, kudos to North Mississippi Medical Center. They are the organization on the far right of the chart, and are still the target to beat. It has been several years since NMMC received the Baldrige Award, but still they set the pace for the rest of us to follow. So, you can bet we will be doing all we can to find out what they are doing right and duplicate that in our organization. It will bug me as long as they out perform us! Just kidding!
Congratulations to North Mississippi Medical Center.
Rulon
