Why Does Patient Satisfaction Matter?

Patient Satisfaction Begins With Consistent Quality of Care 

Improving patient satisfaction in hospitals is a vital KPI for any hospital CEO, administrator, or chief of staff. Great attention is paid to patient feedback and with good reason. Hospitals provide critical services that have a direct impact on people’s quality of life. Maintaining and improving patient satisfaction and experience scores is a full-time endeavor. There is no finish line. No point at which you stop and say “Good enough”.

One of the ways hospital CEOs and administrators are raising patient satisfaction for the long haul is by investing in building robust hospitalist services. Having a stable and reliable core group of hospitalists is an absolute necessity. Other strategies, like building a world-class cardiac surgery program, for example, can not only improve your hospital’s patient satisfaction rates but also its image and reputation. But before that can even be considered, you must have the right team of hospitalists in place. 

How Hospitalists Enable Higher Patient Satisfaction and More

Your hospitalist team essentially serves as the backbone of a hospital’s clinical team. If you have physicians on staff who have been there for some years and made a home, they will have developed an intimate knowledge of the facility and organization. They’ll have a natural rhythm to their workflow. They will know who to contact for what. Hospitalists who know one another and have had the time to build a strong professional relationship will work more efficiently and they will deliver better care.

Your Hospital Staff Needs Time to Become Seasoned

Every physician takes the Hippocratic Oath and we trust that hospitalists, even in temporary arrangements, take their work seriously. But let’s be honest. Anyone in just about any career field is generally going to be more effective when they have the time to work in the same place, with most of the same people for a number of years. It takes time to become acclimated to a new hospital. To learn their EMR systems, their procedures and protocols. 

It takes time to learn the most efficient way to go about certain things and get the resources you need. There is also a need to get to know the rest of the staff. Any hospital will have a certain amount of turnover, whether it be locum tenens physicians or travel nurses, or what-have-you. 

But, staff shortages, limited resources, difficult-to-predict patient flows and other factors have made these temporary staff members more common than ever before in American hospitals. 

No one can reasonably claim this hasn’t had an impact on both quality of care and patient satisfaction rates. We cannot turn back time and we may never reach a place where just about every hospital employee is a seasoned full-timer. But, that does not mean there isn’t a way forward. 

A Robust Hospitalist Service Leads to Higher Patient Satisfaction Rates

The hospitalist position is one of the most critical roles in any medical center. We believe that building a strong, stable hospitalist team, utilizing Open Source MD, is an excellent way to improve morale and efficiency on the floor. More than this, it raises the standard of care, which leads to higher patient satisfaction scores. But why do we believe this? It’s simple really. Open Source MD was founded by physicians who have intimate, first hand experience in hospitals. We’ve seen all of this up close and we’ve developed a better way. 

Your Current Staffing Arrangement May Be Less Than Optimal

In the fragmented staffing arrangements that most hospitals implement, a hospital adds more and more physicians to the treatment team with multiple hospitalist handoffs.  In this situation, the care plan is more apt to change because each physician has a different way of interpreting results, evaluating a patient, and formulating a treatment plan based on the clinical and historical assessment.  

This inconsistency adversely affects patient satisfaction because patients don’t know who to trust or what to believe, or they simply may be more confused because each physician communicates the diagnosis and care plan differently. The fact is that patients want to see as few physicians as possible. They are often already under stress, and playing musical chairs with their doctors only adds to their anxiety, leads to a lower quality of care, and ultimately lower patient satisfaction ratings. 

This is a lose-lose proposition. The hospital isn’t saving any money on staffing and the care is worse. 

How Open Source MD Improves Your Hospitalist Service

Open Source MD has effectively reinvented the physician-to-hospital relationship. One of the results is a more effective and consistent hospitalist service. Firstly, we staff the hospitalist service in a way that minimizes hospitalist handoffs. For example, Open Source MD schedules the hospitalists and specialists such that they always hand off the service on Tuesdays and schedule tours that are at least 7 days. The hospitalists and specialists affiliated with us also work extended shifts beyond 12 hours.

This arrangement creates a consistent atmosphere whereby the treatment team (hospitalist and specialists) presents a coherent treatment plan to both the patient and their family. Patient satisfaction is inherently improved when all of the physicians are on the same page and are consistent in how they communicate the treatment plan with the patient and family. Our system not only ensures patients are less likely to see multiple hospitalists, but it also makes better use of your specialists’ time, freeing them to concentrate on what only they can do.   

A well-established and high-performing hospitalist service…

• Helps ensure consistent quality of care for all of your patients.
• Improves patient experience by limiting hospitalist hand-offs. 
• Empowers your specialists to focus their time and energy where they are needed most.
• Gives your specialists more confidence that their patients will be well looked after.

When you take the 30,000-foot view of it all, it’s easy to see how each of the items above contributes powerfully to higher patient satisfaction rates. Next month we will take a look at how Open Source MD’s model can strengthen your hospitalist service and enable you to focus on specialties that can improve hospital revenue and reputation. 

Practical Solutions to Hospital Staffing Challenges

Open Source M.D. was founded by physicians who recognized an urgent need for a better hospital staffing solution. Ensuring you have experienced hospitalists and other physicians on staff who know your hospital and feel like a part of it is essential to meeting the highest standards for quality of care. 

The Open Source MD model connects physicians to hospitals so they can build lasting relationships as partners. Unlike commercial hospital staffing agencies, we facilitate doctor-hospital relationships rather than acting as an obstacle to them.  

Please call us at 336-997-9840 or contact us online to learn more.