At Wyoming Valley Health Care System, exceptional care is the rule.
Exceptional health care means patients feel safe, comfortable and satisfied with the overall care they receive. That's why patient satisfaction has become one of the most important indicators of the overall quality of care offered by a health care institution. In fact, high patient satisfaction survey scores have been linked to:
- improved quality of patient outcomes
- improved safety for patients
- lower costs for care
- improved overall clinical quality
It's no surprise that at Wilkes-Barre General Hospital, we take patient satisfaction very seriously. That's why we voluntarily participate in a formal patient satisfaction survey process with Press Ganey, a national leader in health care performance measurement and improvement. In fact, Wilkes-Barre General Hospital received national recognition with the 2003 Press Ganey Compass Award for the most dramatic improvement in overall satisfaction scores at an inpatient hospital of between 300 and 449 beds. And, in 2005, patients ranked nursing care at Wilkes-Barre General Hospital in the top 10 percent of U.S. hospitals of similar size.
Most recently, our patient satisfaction results have demonstrated that Wilkes-Barre General Hospital inpatients consistently rank extremely favorably compared to similarly sized hospitals across the country.
Specifically, Wilkes-Barre General Hospital ranked in the 88th percentile most recently, with nearly 60 percent of respondents ranking the hospital as very good (the highest rating) when rating overall care. The highest rated patient care area was our Critical Care Unit, in which patients rated the care in the 90th percentile. Notably, our cardiac care services scored higher than 97 percent of other hospitals surveyed. That’s significant customer satisfaction!
We continue to impress upon all of our employees the importance of patient satisfaction throughout our entire System. We also consistently recognize employees and offer rewards (entertainment tickets, gift certificates, etc.) to those employees or clinical areas whose survey scores markedly improve.
Patient satisfaction. Although we've attained vastly improved patient satisfaction over the past few years, it's something we strive to improve every day. It's also one more reason why so many patients continue to choose Wilkes-Barre General Hospital, the region's health care leader...for truly exceptional care.