Regional Medical Center Recognized at the Johns Hopkins Best Practices in Patient- Centered Care Conference
In late September 2013, Regional Medical Center, a part of Regional One Health, was one of only a handful of medical facilities across the country invited to present at a conference on Best Practices in Patient-Centered Care hosted by the medical innovators at Johns Hopkins – recognized as the #1 hospital in America by U.S. News & World Report. Representatives from Regional Medical Center traveled to the Johns Hopkins Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality in Baltimore to present the process improvements they put in place that both increased patient satisfaction and significantly improved their HCAHPS¹ (patient satisfaction) survey scores.
The conference offers leading hospital administrators, clinicians and policy makers across the United States the rare opportunity to come together in collaborative discussions on best practices and learn ways to improve patient care through case studies presented by industry-leaders like Regional Medical Center. Chosen as an esteemed presenter, Regional Medical Center staff shared their success and process improvements resulting from implementation of a new patient call-manager system.
This new system of protocols aimed to improve patient care, in part by increasing communication with patients following discharge from the hospital. Registered nurses will follow up with all patients within 24 hours; reiterating important steps in the patient’s treatment plan, reviewing proper use of medications, answering questions and resolving any potential concerns. This new system has been so successful that it’s resulted in significant improvement of Regional Medical Center’s HCAHPS scores² and declined readmission rates. With the overwhelmingly positive impact on both patient experience and the hospital’s bottom line, Regional One Health plans to roll out these protocols to their outpatient services in 2014.
1 Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS)
2 An improvement from the 17th percentile to the 91st percentile in nursing composite score; an improvement from the 77th percentile to the 96th percentile in medication composite score; an improvement from the 57th percentile to the 67th percentile in discharge composite score