Hospitals Strive to Make Patients More Comfortable
Hospitals Strive to Make Patients More Comfortable
Even if you’ve managed to avoid hospitals for most of your life, as you age chances increase that you’ll require a hospital stay. You may dread hospitals because you either know firsthand or have heard how unpleasant the experience can be. Popular stories often revolve around acquiring infections and getting sicker from being in the hospital, being discharged too early or not being able to get a good night’s sleep.
But there may never be a better time to be in the hospital, because hospitals are working to be more responsive to patients. Motivated partly by patient satisfaction surveys that are tied to Medicare payments and partly by increased competition, hospitals are taking action. They strive to make surgery safer and be more responsive to patients’ emotional comfort. Initiated in 2012 and tied to the Affordable Care Act, Medicare financially rewards the best-performing hospitals, based on the surveys. Because private insurers typically follow Medicare's lead, it's expected they, too, will eventually tie reimbursements to patient satisfaction.
In addition, hospitals are asking their nurses to complete more education and training, such as a bachelor of science in nursing and specialized certifications. Overall, hospitals are more likely today to value nurses’ input, as it is the nurse who has the most daily contact with patients and families. The goal is to facilitate greater whole-person care, which helps in the healing process.
Seeking Patient Input
The satisfaction survey asks patients about communication with doctors and nurses, hospital staff responsiveness, pain management, information received about medicines, whether the hospital was clean and quiet and about discharge and transition of care to a home or facility.
Because noise consistently gets the worst marks on patient surveys, hospitals are working to create a quieter environment. They are replacing overhead staff paging systems with wireless headsets, allowing patients to shut room doors and ask not to be disturbed, and installing white-noise machines and sound-absorbing ceiling tiles and carpets in rooms and corridors. In some units, routine checks of vital signs are not done unless necessary (from “Hospitals Work on Patients' Most-Frequent Complaint: Noise,” June 10, 2013, Wall Street Journal.
Making Patients More Comfortable
Several hospitals are even working to reduce patients’ emotional distress that results from insensitivities in the care system. “The effort is driven partly by competition and partly by a realization that suffering, whether from long waits, inadequate explanations or feeling lost in the shuffle, is a real and pressing issue,” according to the New York Times (“Doctors Strive to Do Less Harm by Inattentive Care,” Feb. 17, 2015).
When medical staff started asking patients about causes for their distress, they heard about a doctor bluntly telling a patient he had cancer and the loss of privacy when a doctor discussed a patient’s medical condition where others could hear, a violation of HIPPA regulations, which can also place the hospital under risk of litigation. One hospital posted the patient satisfaction scores for its doctors, nurses and other workers, which galvanized the staff to improve their performance—and ratings.
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