Becoming a Leader in Patient Satisfaction

Abstract In the context of the current health care payer system, quality of care standards, financial incentives and consumer choice are not well aligned, yet competition for increased admissions has become a matter of survival. Satisfaction and loyalty are two constructs that are the most meaningful measures in the context of sustaining and increas—ing admissions. Lehigh Valley Hospital and Health Network (LVHHN) launched an ambitious patient satisfaction improvement initiative in 2001. LVHHN augmented existing patient service excellence programs with an ethnographic study of a representative unit. Interview and obser—vational data were analyzed using NVivo software. These results (four distilled domains of patient experience) can then be used to identify key components of the care environment that made meaningful differences in the perceptions of patients and their satisfaction. A designated interde—partmental task force can then develop interventions from those learnings, track outcomes through the Pre...