Hospital Consumer Assessment Of Healthcare Providers And System

A hospital is first and foremost a business and as such it needs to maintain customer satisfaction to stay in operation. Ensuring patients receive the best possible experience while hospitalized is of vital importance to today’s competitive market. Through the completion of a comprehensive survey customer satisfaction posthospitalization can be determined.

Once discharged, a patient will receive a questionnaire containing standardized questions regarding their perceived in-hospital treatment during their recent health related crisis. It is in this manner that patients can provide feedback concerning the care they experienced during their hospital stay. Once evaluated, the information is made available to the public. By publishing the results, customers can obtain a “feel” for a hospital allowing for what goes on in a hospital to become more transparent. Publishing also creates a competitive market between hospitals on a local, a regional and a national level for patient business (CMS, n.d.). The outcome of the survey also provides a spotlight on areas requiring improvement. It becomes a guide to the direction a hospital needs to take to ensure the best and safest care.

Communication is one area of the survey that shows room for improvement. Lack of effective communication is causing patients to express feelings of dissatisfaction. It also can be noted that inadequate communication has been known to disrupt efficiency of care which can lead to increased length of stay. Finally, poor communication has been determined to be a main factor for sentinel events occurrences. A sentinel event is severe harm or death to a patient due to a detrimental cause or event (Dempsey et al., 2014, p.