Follow the Improving Health Care Blog

Several times in the past few years, I’ve been complimented by associates on being a great leader. With that praise usually comes the question, “Is it something you were taught, or is this just who you are?” My response typically includes telling a story of a great leader that I had the pleasure of working for whose skills and behaviors I have tried to emulate ever since. Then I almost always tell another story—with some ...

Do you have hospitalists in your organization? If so, stop for a moment and make a mental list of what’s going well and not so well in your hospitalist program—I’ll return to that in a moment. But first, I lead a session at the Press Ganey Regional Education Symposiums called “Engaging your Hospitalists.” In the sessions, we discuss concerns, best practices and initiatives that have been implemented at other organizations. I am finding that although ...

I was intrigued by a number of questions raised by the audience during a presentation on “Safety Culture Disconnects” at Press Ganey’s Regional Educational Symposium in Orlando earlier this month. People were concerned about challenges associated with changing an organization’s culture, such as: What are the numbers really telling us? And, how do we help leadership not respond in crisis mode? Overall, what I heard was the need for leaders to step back, take a ...

 My son came home from college one afternoon this past fall and told me about a discussion on universal health coverage that had taken place in his political science class. Politically and philosophically, his classmates range from very conservative to very liberal and include some European students who could most accurately be described as social democrats. The discussion, as these discussions usually are, was a heated one. Should those of us who work hard, have ...

Delivering exceptional clinical and service quality to the communities you serve is undoubtedly a part of your facility’s mission statement. With the health care marketplace growing ever more competitive, the hope is that your patients will eventually recommend your service to others. Word of mouth is still king.

Patients are referring neighbors to your hospital or practice, and a growing number are using web-based tools such as Facebook and Twitter to tell their friends about ...

The mechanisms for how hospitals will be paid based on quality measures — and  how HCAHPS will fit into those calculations — has left much of the industry watching the unfolding health care reform debate with bated breath. If we keep waiting, we’re in danger of passing out. That is not to say that meaningful payment reform or answers to the many unanswered questions won’t occur in the near future. It’s just that we need ...

When revisions to the Grievance Interpretive Guidelines first came on the scene back in 2004-2005, there was much anxiety surrounding the definition of a patient grievance and how comments from patient satisfaction surveys fit into the rules under the Medicare and Medicaid Conditions of Participation.

The Society for Healthcare Consumer Advocacy worked extremely hard with representatives from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to clarify and ultimately agree to changes in the final ...

Okay, this may not be a news flash to most, but as industries go, the hospital industry is not widely recognized for its innovative business practices.

I learned this early on in my career as a hospital strategic planner in Texas. My boss, a brilliant and creative thinker, would often pull me aside and school me on the many insights he learned over the years as first a city and then a hospital planner. “Look ...