Susquehanna Health follows up with patients and other customers on the quality of health care services and transactions by mailing satisfaction surveys to patients shortly after their discharge. We make post-discharge phone calls to all inpatients and patients having outpatient surgery to address any concerns or questions they may have about their recent services or interactions. A formal complaint resolution process is also used whenever a patient complaint is received.

Press Ganey

We obtain information on patients and other customer’s satisfaction relative to healthcare industry benchmarks by using the 90th percentile or better of the Press Ganey hospital database for our patient satisfaction target. We also set targets for HCAPS results based on our competitors and hospitals of similar size. Perception of and satisfaction with our health system verses other hospitals is also addressed through focus groups and survey research methodologies. Constant improvement in user satisfaction is driven by our System service strategy to be the best in providing satisfied patients and among the best in clinical quality and operational efficiency.

We keep our approaches to determining satisfaction current with healthcare service needs and directions through systematic monitoring of the environment, including identification of changes in patient and other customer needs and expectations. For example, today there is a higher expectation for personal service and related amenities driven by consumerism and heightened competition. This finding resulted in the deployment of free valet parking at our hospital campus locations. Another means of staying current is through use of Press Ganey as our patient and medical staff survey vendor. Their annual Pulse survey is designed to measure changes in how respondents view the relative importance of various factors influencing satisfaction, e.g. respect for me as an individual, cheerfulness of the hospital, coordination of my care, etc. To assist with the development of a Medical Staff recruitment plan, we worked with an outside consulting firm. Through this process, we used input from our Medical Staff, referring physicians and community members. Very little input came from Susquehanna Health administration. The surveys asked questions about the types of physician specialists needed in the community.