Email Colin M. Stewart at cstewart@hawaiitribune-herald.com.
By COLIN M. STEWART
Tribune-Herald staff writer
The most recent results from Hilo Medical Center’s patient satisfaction surveys show that the hospital continues to lag behind state and national averages in most key areas.
While HMC’s scores remain below average, it has made improvements, administrators point out. Additionally, because the most recent scores available are for 2010, they represent where the hospital “has been — and in the case of HMC, not yet accurately reporting where the hospital is today, given the dedicated effort over the last year to improve the patient experience,” said Director of Marketing Mary Stancill.
The satisfaction scores, available through the website www.hospitalcompare.hhs.gov, represent a random sampling of 10 questions answered by patients who stayed in the hospital for at least one night during 2010.
In perhaps the most telling statistic contained within the findings, only 46 percent of patients surveyed said they would “definitely recommend” HMC. That represented an increase of 1 percentage point from the same surveys completed in 2009.
Meanwhile, the Big Isle’s other hospitals were more highly regarded by their customers. Fifty-seven percent of Kona Community Hospital’s patients said they would “definitely recommend” it, and 78 percent of North Hawaii Community Hospital’s patients said they would do the same. The state average was 65 percent, and the national average was 70 percent.
According to Stancill, comparing HMC with other Big Island facilities doesn’t provide an “apples-to-apples comparison” of Hawaii’s most similar, large hospitals. She pointed to Maui Memorial and Oahu’s The Queen’s Medical Center as more accurate comparisons. Fifty-eight percent of respondents said they would recommend Maui Memorial, while 83 percent said they would recommend The Queen’s. In general, both hospitals outscored Hilo Medical Center on the other questions, although in some cases the difference was small.
On questions concerning the environment of the hospital, HMC showed some decreases in performance.
Only 38 percent of respondents in 2010 said the area around their rooms was “always quiet at night,” compared with 41 percent saying the same the previous year. State and national averages for the same question were 52 percent and 58 percent, respectively.
Meanwhile, 65 percent of HMC’s surveyed patients said their rooms and bathrooms were “always clean,” compared with 66 percent in 2009. State and national averages on that question weren’t much higher, at 71 percent and 72 percent, respectively.
The hospital’s biggest increases appeared to come in the area of communication with patients. There was a 5-percentage-point increase on a question concerning whether patients felt their nurses always communicated well, as well as a 5-percentage-point increase in patients saying that they had been given information about what to do while recovering at home. Doctor communication with patients showed an increase of 1 percentage point.
Despite those increases, however, HMC’s scores for all 10 questions remained below national averages, and HMC trailed state averages on all but the home recovery information question.
In a phone interview on Wednesday afternoon, CEO Howard Ainsley said he and his staff have been placing more focus on the patient experience at HMC in the last year, and the 2010 results do not reflect those efforts to a large degree.
“One thing we’ve done is we’ve initiated an Achieving Excellence Institute,” he said. “It’s a training program our employees go through, a daylong training, and it’s focused on service excellence and making sure our team understands our priorities.”
Additionally, he said, the hospital offers patient satisfaction representatives, who check in on patients and try to address any questions or concerns. “I’ve made it a mission to daily go in, myself, and talk to patients,” he said.
Currently, hospital administrators are working on building a multi-disciplinary “patient experience council,” which will focus on “making the patient experience a more remarkable experience, and a more positive experience,” he said.
Overall, Ainsley said, 2011 was “what I deem an exceptional year on a number of levels,” and next year’s patient survey results should better reflect that progress.
“The scores are not as high as we want them to be, but I do feel confident that if we stay on track … I think we’re gonna see them dramatically improve,” he said.
Email Colin M. Stewart at cstewart@hawaiitribune-herald.com.