Hospital Patient Satisfaction and
the Quality Patient Experience
Achieving hospital patient satisfaction and the quality patient experience: This quest leads not only to satisfied and cared-for patients and families, but also to positive outcomes for your staff, your community and your organization’s health. By providing the quality patient experience, you can:
- Pridefully advance your healthcare mission
- Attract and retain talented staff
- Win patient loyalty
- Excel on HCAHPS, Press Ganey, Picker or other hospital satisfaction surveys
- Secure the position of provider of choice in your competitive healthcare marketplace
You can fulfill these aspirations by embracing a patient and family-centered care philosophy and instituting sustainable practices that drive hospital patient satisfaction and create the consistently quality patient experience.
Based on 25 years of healthcare experience, Wendy Leebov advances six principles key to breakthroughs in the patient experience and hospital patient satisfaction.
Achieving Breakthroughs in Hospital Patient Satisfaction:
Five Driving Principles
Principle 1:
The quality patient experience doesn’t happen by accident. If it happens, you can bet is was designed. A consistently GREAT patient experience is not a matter of attitude, awareness or positive intent. It’s a matter of design and stick-to-itiveness.
(Free Tool: Process Redesign--Important Questions)
Principle 2:
“Anxiety is the rust of life, destroying its brightness and weakening its power.” (Anon)
We are not Disney. Our customers are highly anxious. To create an exceptional patient experience, we need to focus on preventing or lessening anxiety for patients and families. That’s a more pertinent and achievable goal than “making people happy.”
Click here to listen
to a 13-minute interview podcast with Wendy in which she makes a powerful case for anxiety reduction as key to improving the patient experience and satisfaction.
Free Tools:
Principle 3:
“Some emotions don't make a lot of noise. Caring is real faint - like a heartbeat.” (Anon) If we don’t communicate our caring, patients and families might think we don’t care. In these days of extreme task orientation and multi-tasking, staff need reminders and support to communicate their caring.
(Free Tool: Speaking the Language of Caring)
Principle 4:
Patients and families want care and service to feel PERSONAL. Amazingly, we can standardize that and make it happen consistently.
(Free Tool: Use the Quick Connecting Process to Standardize Personalized Care)
Principle 5:
Ineffective accountability is evidence that we are not serious. The allies of accountability:
- Feisty determination
- Clear expectations
- Clear agreements
- Sound measurement and feedback
- Courageous conversations
- Consequences
(Free Tool: Model for Caring Feedback: Holding Each Other Accountable)
Principle 6:
The more strongly your hospital’s culture supports the quality patient experience, the more sustainable are impressive levels of patient satisfaction. Effective long-term strategies inevitably involve a fresh look at the hospital culture and how it drives or restrains your patient experience vision. As far back as 1984, Wendy Leebov talked about “The Ten Pillars” of hospital culture that need to bolster the patient experience.
By examining these Ten Pillars,
you can identify strengths of your culture and also pinpoint needed realignments.
Want Expert Help?
Wendy Leebov and her team provide high-impact services to help hospitals achieve and sustain high patient satisfaction scores and the quality patient experience. We specialize in mobilizing and engaging your entire workforce in contributing to the quality patient experience. Whether you’re interested in a comprehensive, long-term strategy or a set of interventions designed to address specific performance gaps and challenges, we can help.
Click to sample our strategies and programs.
Strategy to Improve Emergency Department Patient Satisfaction
Peer Coach Training
Testimonials
"Wendy's passion for the quality patient experience is infectious. From our first meeting with Wendy, we knew that her approach matched our organization perfectly. Her concepts are easily understood and embraced by staff and physicians. We have seen consistent increases in our patient satisfaction scores as a result of the training provided by Wendy and her excellent team of associates. We look forward to a long relationship and continued counsel from Wendy and her team."
John P. Massimilla, FACHE
VP, Administration/COO
Chambersburg Hospital
"Wendy has helped our system build a highly desired culture of service excellence. She has helped us develop and implement house-wide campaigns, taught us best practice tactics, promoted customer-centered teamwork, and provided leadership with coaching and retreat facilitation. Wendy and her associates have a remarkable impact."
Vince Mazella
Corp. Director, Training and Organizational Development
Crozer-Keystone Health System, Upland, PA
Partial List of Hospital Clients
- Albert Einstein Healthcare Network
- Catholic Health Initiatives
- Cleveland Clinic
- Huntington Hospital
- Lexington Medical Center
- Meriter Health Services
- Renfrew Centers
- Thomas Jefferson University Hospital
- Summit Health
- Tenet Health
- Virtua Health
- WellSpan Health
- Yale-New Haven Hospital
Also see Books by Wendy Leebov on Hospital Patient Satisfaction
More Resources on Hospital Patient Satisfaction:
For networking with other patient experience champions or for additional resources about patient advocacy, ethics, patient satisfaction/measurement, and customer service, visit the
Society for Healthcare Consumer Advocacy.
Return from Hospital Patient Satisfaction to Quality Patient Experience Home