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Fitzgerald Health Education Associates, Inc., April 2015 fhea.com
NP Firsts Update: Hospital Facilities & Patient Satisfaction
A NEW STUDY published in the Journal of Hospital
Medicine finds that, contrary to previous reports, the
most important factor in patients' satisfaction with
their hospital experience is superior service-related
communication skills between hospital staff and pa-
tients—not impressive hospital amenities and reno-
vations.
Patient judgments have become more important
to hospitals since Medicare started publishing rat-
ings and basing some reimbursements on surveys
patients fill out after they leave the hospital, and
there is a widespread belief among healthcare lead-
ership that facility renovation or expansion is a vital
strategy for improving patient satisfaction, accord-
ing to Zishan K. Siddiqui, MD, Assistant Professor of
Medicine at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine,
and lead author of the study.
When Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore, MD,
built a new $1.1 billion hospital tower in 2012 that
featured patient-centered design features, Dr. Sid-
diqui and colleagues had a unique opportunity to
test the assumption that patients rate their care
more highly when it is provided in a nicer place.
When patients and some practitioners were relocat-
ed from their old hospital building into the new
355-bed hospital tower, Dr. Siddiqui and colleagues
were able to perform a large pre- and post-evalua-
tion study of patient satisfaction. The study sur-
veyed patients before and after the move to the
new hospital tower, using data from Hospital Con-
sumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Sys-
tems and Press Ganey surveys. The investigators hy-
pothesized that new building features would
positively impact provider, ancillary staff, and over-
all satisfaction, as well as improve satisfaction with
the facility.
The investigators analyzed 7.5 months of post-
move patient satisfaction survey results and 12
months of pre-move patient satisfaction results.
More than 5660 patients were surveyed from both
the baseline and control groups. Data were catego-
rized into facility-related, non-facility related, or
overall satisfaction-related domains. Patients on un-
relocated clinical units who returned satisfaction
surveys served as controls.
The researchers found that better facilities did
Staff a Bigger Influence on Patient
Happiness Than Extravagant Hospital