Becker's Clinical Quality & Infection Control

23 PATIENT & CAREGIVER EXPERIENCE Minnesota hospital shooting comes year after nurses asked for more security By Mackenzie Bean N urses at Minneapolis-based M Health Fairview say they asked for heightened security in its hospitals' parking areas last year, but administrators ignored the request, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported Sept. 16. On the night of Sept. 14, a physician was shot in his head during an attempted rob- bery on a parking ramp at the system's Fair- view Southdale Hospital in Edina, Minn., police said. e 45-year-old physician sur- vived the shooting and was discharged from the hospital the next morning. As of Sept. 16, no arrests had been made in the case. Nurses raised parking-related safety con- cerns during union contract negotiations with the health system last year, detailing "unsafe and mind-boggling obstacles" traveling to and from their cars, according to the report. ey also described waiting at least an hour for hospital shuttles or to have security escort them to their cars. "M Health Fairview was not interested in discussions regarding parking ramp safety when we proposed this in 2019 and never provided any counterproposal," Cassy Fogale, a labor representative with the Minnesota Nurses Association, told the Journal Sentinel. M Health Fairview confirmed to the Journal Sentinel that it did not address parking safety during contract negotiations. "Workplace safely has been a shared concern for all of our hospital staff administrators," Joe Campbell, a spokesperson for the system, told the publication. "We all share the same common objective of making our hospitals safe places to work and receive care." Fairview Southdale Hospital is in the process of increasing hospital safety and security, Vice President of System Operations Paul Onufer told staff in a Sept. 15 email obtained by the Journal Sentinel. The hospital said it is boosting security patrols in parking structures, adding more security officers outside its buildings and updating security technolo- gy, among other measures. n UMass Memorial giving employees appreciation bonuses By Kelly Gooch W orcester, Mass.-based UMass Memorial Health Care is giving employees bonuses for their work during the COVID-19 pandemic. The bonuses range from $125 to $500, depending on hours worked and whether the employee is full-time, part-time or per diem, said Sergio Melgar, executive vice president and CFO, during an interview with Becker's. About 60 executives and chairs of med- ical departments are excluded. Workers who've been hired since July 1 also are excluded, according to the Worcester Business Journal. "People worked extremely hard over the past six months," Mr. Melgar told Becker's, adding that all of the hospital's perfor- mance measures had improved, including quality and patient satisfaction scores. UMass Memorial Health Care has about 14,000 employees. n Patients give physicians who share same race or ethnicity higher ratings, study finds By Erica Carbajal N early 88 percent of physicians who shared the same race or eth- nicity as their patients received the maximum score on a patient experience survey compared to 82 percent from discordant pairs, according to a study published in JAMA Network Open. Researchers from Penn Medicine in Philadelphia analyzed 117,589 Press Ganey Outpatient Medical Practice Surveys, a commonly used tool to gauge patient experience, between July 2014 and May 2017. About 82 percent of patients who participated were white, 12.8 percent were Black, 3.4 percent were Asian and 2.3 percent were Hispanic. Overall, patients were more likely to give the maximum patient rating score if their physician shared the same race or ethnicity. Among Black patients, ratings were 3 percentage points higher for Black physicians compared to white physicians. Researchers said the results shouldn't discourage physicians from car- ing for diverse patient populations, but underline the need to better understand how different factors play a role in the patient experience. "Our data highlights why it's more important than ever to have a diverse physician workforce who looks like all the different types of pa- tients we take care of, including different genders and different races," said senior study author Deirdre Sawinski, MD, associate professor of medicine at University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine in Philadelphia. n

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