Issue link: https://beckershealthcare.uberflip.com/i/1273352
24 PATIENT & CAREGIVER EXPERIENCE 14 hospitals where patients felt staff respected their preferences most By Gabrielle Masson T he following hospitals had the highest percentage of patients who strongly agreed that staff took their preferences into account when determining health- care needs, according to updated HCAHPS scores. Wiscon- sin had three hospitals with the highest positive response percentage, more than any other state. At least 67 percent of patients at these 14 hospitals strongly agreed that "staff took their preferences into account." e figures are from CMS' Hospital Compare website and represent HCAHPS scores collected from July 2018 through June 2019. Note: Hospitals with fewer than 100 completed surveys were excluded from this list. California Patients' Hospital of Redding Florida Healthmark Regional Medical Center (Defuniak Springs) Iowa Iowa Speciality Hospital-Belmond Kentucky Casey County Hospital (Liberty) Louisiana Central Louisiana Surgical Hospital (Alexandria) Lafayette Surgical Specialty Hospital Michigan Schoolcra Memorial Hospital (Manistique) North Carolina Davie Medical Center (Mocksville) Nebraska Fillmore County Hospital (Geneva) Pennsylvania Advanced Surgical Hospital (Washington) Texas Houston Physicians' Hospital (Webster) Wisconsin OakLeaf Surgical Hospital (Altoona) Sauk Prairie Hospital (Prairie Du Sac) Orthopaedic Hospital of Wisconsin (Glendale) n How a California hospital is calming patient coronavirus fears, encouraging ED visits By Anuja Vaidya H ospitals across the country are seeing significant drops in emergency department visits as more patients avoid them during the COVID-19 pandemic. Adventist Health Lodi (Calif.) Memorial, a 150-bed community hospital, decided to address those fears head-on and encourage patients who needed emergency care to come to the hospital's ED, accord- ing to an article in NEJM Catalyst. Hospital leaders, who wrote the article, said ED visits to their facility cut in half between the first week of March and first week of April. California issued a shelter-in-place order March 19, the first U.S. state to do so. Hospitals leaders realized people who needed emergency care were avoiding the hospital. One of the key indicators was emergency medical services reported a drastic increase in cardiac arrests outside the hospital in March, compared to February, which suggests patients were waiting too long to seek cardiac care at the hospital, the authors wrote. To address the issue, Adventist Health Lodi Memorial created a team that conducted 10 phone interviews with patients and five in-person interviews with providers to understand hospi- tal usage. They gleaned several insights from the interviews, including that patients wanted to avoid the hospital because they believed it posed the greatest risk of exposure to the new coronavirus and that they were unaware of cleaning precau- tions and screening methods at the hospital. In response, the hospital made two changes: 1. The hospital split the ED into respiratory pods, where patients with respiratory symptoms were evaluated, and non-respiratory pods, where patients without those symp- toms were evaluated. 2. It used targeted messaging to communicate clear infor- mation about services and risks to patients, such as send- ing emails to existing patients letting them know the ED was open and using social media to inform patients about symptoms that constitute an emergency. Though it is too early to evaluate the success of the inter- ventions, the authors said there was an improvement in the hospital's ED volume in the first week after the changes were made, starting April 17. "As we reopen the country, we may find that patients' fears of the healthcare environment extend beyond this imme- diate crisis," the authors wrote. "It will become increasingly important to engage the community in order to mitigate the public health risk of avoiding care for life-threatening illnesses." n