Good health care involves treating the whole person, which includes medical, psychological, and social aspects of care. Patient experience—making sure patients feel listened to and their concerns cared about, in a comfortable environment with thoughtful consideration of their needs—is an integral part of quality care and clinical outcomes. Recently, Penn Medicine earned several awards for the second straight year from Press Ganey, a firm which measures, tracks, and analyzes patient experience metrics. Press Ganey not only does this analysis for hospitals to track how well they deliver care for themselves, but also measures these outcomes on behalf of Medicare and Medicaid as part of their national measurement of quality health care (HCHAPS survey).
When patients complete an inpatient stay or receive outpatient care for hospital-related services such as radiology or the lab, they may receive a Press Ganey survey about their experiences—from the attentiveness and communication of the care team to cleanliness, to the discharge process, and more. Hospitals use this data to improve processes and training, with the goal of providing an experience that patients would recommend to others. Data also demonstrates that patients who have a better experience also have better outcomes.
As part of its 2023 Human Experience Awards, Press Ganey again recognized Penn Medicine in four categories:
The Clinical Practices of The University of Pennsylvania (CPUP) Apheresis Therapy Treatment received the Pinnacle of Excellence Award for Outpatient Patient Experience. This award is given to the top-performing organizations in each Press Ganey survey for extraordinary achievement—maintaining consistently high levels of excellence over three years.
The Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (HUP), Pavilion was awarded the Guardian of Excellence Award for Inpatient Patient Experience. Guardian of Excellence awards are granted annually to the top five percent of institutions in patient experience measures.
The Penn Medicine Radnor Surgery Center, also part of HUP, received both the Pinnacle of Excellence and the Guardian of Excellence Award for Ambulatory Surgery Patient Experience.
Penn Medicine Chester County Hospital (CCH) received the Guardian of Excellence Award for Inpatient Patient Experience.
The recognitions underscore the expert clinical care that Penn Medicine provides; they further highlight a commitment to compassion and personalized service, cementing the health system’s status as a national leader in delivering exceptional patient experience.
Efforts behind excellence in patient experience
Along with other leaders and staff behind these recent recognitions, it takes multiple efforts on multiple fronts to achieve a world-class patient experience. It starts with building and supporting teams of employees who are naturally kind and dedicated to making patients’ lives better, according to Jessie Reich, PhD, RN, ANP-BC, HUP’s director of Experience and Magnet Programs. “Providing high quality care, including the best possible experience is foundational at Penn Medicine,” she said. “We are fortunate to have the Penn Medicine Academy that provides us tools to identify the right candidates who have those qualities. It’s hard to teach empathy or compassion. And so recognizing that in people is really important.”
Emphasizing the Penn Medicine Experience (PMX) Standards for all employees, including being compassionate, being present, and expressing cultural humility, helps reinforce the focus on making sure that patients and their families have a good experience. Carli Meister, MSc(A), RN, CCH’s director of Patient Experience and Risk, noted that listening to patients and their loved ones helps ensure care teams are accommodating their needs.
Meister also shared that CCH learns from its own positive patient experiences. Nursing units and departments celebrate their patient experience performance results with “Success Analysis Huddles.” She explained, “This strategy emphasizes … the how-to’s linked to the unique staff behaviors and interventions driving high patient experience scores and positive comment themes.”
At the Penn Medicine Radnor Surgery Center, Administrative Director Thomas Nield, MBA, CASC, lauded the frontline employees who “strive to make all patients feel safe and cared for and have an all-around great experience,” from check-in, during procedures, through post-op and follow-up.
That work happens behind the scenes, too. For example, the surgery center began working with the Penn Medicine Center for Health Care Innovation to better communicate with patients by text. “We have seen a huge improvement in patient satisfaction regarding pre-op instructions and a decrease in last-minute cancellations, since patients receive a reminder of their procedure further in advance,” said Nield. That’s just one example of the center’s emphasis on continuous learning.
The effort to improve patient experience extends even to the department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, which is not generally associated with direct patient care. According to Don L. Siegel, MD, PhD, professor of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine, and director of the division of Transfusion Medicine & Therapeutic Pathology, Fellowship Program in Transfusion Medicine, and Center for Advanced Cellular Therapies, departments of pathology “have grown to be more than departments of just diagnostics but nowadays are departments of therapy as well.”
He added, “Our clinical pathologists along with our team of highly specialized nurses provide life-saving therapeutic apheresis procedures for treating many chronic neurologic, hematologic, and metabolic disorders or performing apheresis for the collection of blood cells to enable bone marrow transplantation as well as the manufacture of CAR T cells and other forms of cellular therapy. We are very honored to have received this recognition from Press Ganey for the second year in a row.”
No matter their role, the awards are a testament to the teamwork that makes Penn Medicine what it is. Said Reich, “All care at Penn Medicine requires an entire team of professionals to provide outstanding patient care. These awards are emblematic of the care provided.”