Portage Health - Hancock, Michigan

Compass Award Winner: Medical Practice

Portage Health is a rural, not-for-profit facility located in Hancock, Michigan. The facility has 36 acute care beds, 60 long-term care beds, 1,917 inpatient admissions, 15,000 Emergency Department visits, 2,000 Same-Day Surgery visits, 73,000 physician office visits, and 75,000 Outpatient visits annually.

At Portage Health, we believe in exceeding our patients’ expectations every single time they visit. In our campaign to improve service and boost patient satisfaction, our biggest challenge has been to step into our patients’ shoes and truly understand the way they perceive each interaction with our staff.

That goal was accomplished by the Portage Health Medical Group staff members working together to identify and implement programs and processes that would allow them to be more responsive to patients’ needs. It was often the little things—providing an update on wait time or tracking down the answer to a question—that made a huge impact on the way our patients felt about their visit.

From the very beginning, we have focused our efforts on creating experiences for our patients that were not merely good or satisfactory, but that WOW them every time.

Staff members of each suite within the Portage Health Medical Group worked together in teams and in concert with our Service Improvement Group (SIG), which includes representatives from our administrative and medical staffs. Each team met with the SIG members to discuss the patient satisfaction survey process and their scores, and to devise specific ways to meet our organization’s service goals.

The teams created action plans to improve service and received monthly feedback on their scores in the form of red thermometers that helped them visualize their progress. They also reviewed comments from patients. Physicians and mid-level providers received a letter each time they garnered a comment, with thanks for positive feedback or a reminder that negative feedback offered an opportunity to reflect.

The teams discussed a variety of recovery methods to turn potentially negative experiences for patients into positive ones. The implementation of these efforts has helped ensure that we convert situations that may be frustrating to a patient into experiences in which we deliver all the help they need.

As part of our commitment to providing excellent health care to our community, the Portage Health Medical Group staff is dedicated to seeking out ways to WOW our patients every single day.