The Woohoo! Report

ScienceDaily (Feb. 9, 2009)

Imagine a
hospital where morale is high, employee turnover is low and patient
call buttons rarely go unanswered—and if they do, you can call the
hospital’s CEO.

That’s exactly the type of culture and service that “delights”
patients and makes for the most successful community hospitals in the
country, as rated by caregivers and patients, says John Griffith,
professor in the University of Michigan School of Public Health.

In a newly published report, Griffith examined the attributes of 34
community hospitals in nine states that have earned the Health Care
Sector Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, a nationally recognized
quality benchmark for various industries.

Griffith’s findings suggest that the single-biggest factor in
patient satisfaction is hospital employee morale, which starts with
outside-the-box thinking at the very top management levels.

These community hospitals had the happiest patients and caregivers,
but only because these hospitals departed radically from traditional
hospital management, Griffith says.

For instance, at the Florida hospital where patients receive a
welcome letter with the CEO’s signature and home phone number, they’re
also paid a visit by their unit’s nurse manager, who also leaves cell
and office phone numbers.

This personal service doesn’t come cheaply, yet the hospitals kept
costs low enough to thrive financially on standard Medicare and
insurance payments, despite paying employees “extremely well,” Griffith
says.

“They reward a good job, both with celebration and financially with
cash,” he said. “One of the interesting things about these places is
they don’t have any nursing shortages. They have enough nurses,
well-trained nurses and well-motivated nurses.”

Bronson Methodist Hospital of Kalamazoo is the Michigan recipient.
Oakwood Healthcare System and Henry Ford Health System received the
Michigan Governor’s Award for Excellence in 2008, a state-level
competition based on similar criteria.

Griffith’s report finds that the 34 hospitals emphasized a broadly
communicated mission, a supportive learning culture, universal
measurement and benchmarking, and systematic process improvement.
Traditionally, hospitals emphasize static domains of authority and
don’t formally measure performance, goal setting or continuous
improvement, the paper said.

The shift in management thinking has astonishing results in worker and patient satisfaction, Griffith says.

“The key issue for the patient is the answer to two questions, ‘Will
you return and will you refer?’” he said. “A loyal patient will do
both. These places got that in 90 percent of patients. The usual answer
is a little better than half.”

The 34 hospitals scored in the top 50 percent in nearly all quality
and satisfaction measures and were frequently in the top 10 percent of
national rankings, the study shows. They also spend lots of time
training employees. Bronson, for example, offers more than two weeks of
full-time training to every full-time employee. The national average is
no more than one week.

“Although the recipients are community hospitals, not large teaching
and research hospitals such as the U-M Health System, the set is
broadly representative of American health care,” Griffith said.

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