Achieving statistically significant improvements in patient satisfaction scores in a community hospital through the development of a service excellence model.

O R G A N I Z AT I O N A L I N F O R M AT I O N This organization is a not-for-profit community healthcare system governed by a volunteer board of trustees consisting of 28 community members and physicians. The system employs more than 7,000 people and has 1,700 physicians on staff. It is the largest healthcare system in the region—the result of a merger of two systems in 1998—and comprises four hospitals, two long-term care facilities, two outpatient surgery centers, a health education center, a home care agency, and a state-of-the-art health and fitness center. Each of the two organizations that came together to form the merger had provided services in this community for more than 100 years. Today, the service area has a population of more than 1.4 million people, and the system has 30.0 percent overall market share, 44.5 percent women’s health market share, and 23.6 percent pediatric market share, with major pediatric competition coming from a world-renowned children’s hospital in a major city nearby. More than 7,000 babies are born annually between two of the system’s hospitals, where comprehensive neonatal intensive care for premature newborns is also available. Pediatric primary and specialty care services are offered at the two maternity centers as part of an affiliation with a full-service children’s hospital (not the competing children’s hospital previously noted). With four community-accessible emergency departments, the system handles more adult and pediatric emergencies than any other health system in the region. The specific facility within the system that is the subject of this case study is the hospital that serves the largest population of women and children, with more than 5,200 deliveries annually, a Level III neonatal intensive care unit, and comprehensive pediatric services. The hospital has 1,200 full-time equivalent employees and is licensed for 164 adult medical surgical beds, 15 adult intensive care beds, 20 pediatric beds, 59 obstetrical beds, 30 neonatal intensive care bassinets, and 50 normal newborn bassinets. The emergency department at the hospital has 45,000 visits per year.