Hutcheson Medical Center
Focusing on Personal Interactions
Hutcheson Medical Center is a 179-bed community hospital located in Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia, eight miles southeast of Chattanooga, Tennessee. By focusing intently on patient-staff interactions and patients' needs, Hutcheson Medical Center has turned around its quality and financial indicators in the last two-and-a-half years. Scores on the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey show that Hutcheson is now a leading hospital nationally on measures of patient satisfaction. Five components of the hospital's strategy may be behind their success: fostering a culture of customer service; empowering nurses through shared governance; collecting and tracking data to chart progress; visibility of leaders; and implementing evidence-based practice.
Performance Improvement Strategies
- Organizational model in which staff nurses are given a voice in determining clinical practice, standards, and quality of care
- Nurse checks hourly on 4 "Ps": pain, potty, positioning, and privacy, based on Studer Group principal of patient rounding
- Unit managers ask a sample of patients prior to discharge five questions that mirror ones from the HCAHPS survey; goal is to elicit views from 30 percent of patients before they leave the hospital.
