December 28, 2007 - Sutter Solano Medical Center (SSMC) was recently named a 2007 Press Ganey Compass Award Winner for its Emergency Department's overall improvements in patient satisfaction scores, compared to all other facilities being measured.
The award is a symbol of achievement in the healthcare industry that is bestowed annually, and SSMC is just one of three facilities in its class (emergency departments under 30,000 annual visits) to receive the honor.
“This is by no means a small feat,” said Kim Trumbull, RN, chief nurse executive at SSMC. “Two years ago we faced several challenges in the ED, including a major remodel project and serious staffing issues, and our nursing and executive teams were restructured - we really had our work cut out for us.”
To improve patients’ perception of care, the hospital implemented several service-oriented programs to focus on key areas such as long wait times, courtesy of staff and communication. This included a FasTrac program to quickly triage and care for patients with nonemergency conditions, a throughput committee to focus on bedside registration and immediate bedding to reduce wait times. The hospital also starting making phone calls by charge and triage nurses and physicians as a follow-up to discharged patients and started hourly rounding by the charge nurse to check in on patients and family members and inform them of any delays.
“This is only the beginning of creating a service-oriented culture at SSMC,” Trumbull said. “If we don’t provide our patients with what they want, they’ll go elsewhere, so we’ll build on this success to continually improve our patients' perception of care.”
For more information: www.suttersolano.org