Partnering with a hospital? Credibility and collaboration are key

North American Partners in Anesthesia began providing services at Monmouth Medical Center in 2008, and through their collaboration, the organizations have improved quality of care at the Long Branch, N.J.-based hospital.

At the Becker's Hospital Review 7th Annual Meeting in Chicago, Matthew S. Klein, MD, chief of anesthesia at NAPA, used his company's experience with Monmouth as a guide for how to successfully partner with hospitals.

When first providing services such as anesthesia at a hospital, it's vital to establish credibility, according to Dr. Klein. "You need to make sure that people feel comfortable and know that you're there caring for patients like they are. You have to build credibility with the hospital administration, surgeons, nursing staff and others in the OR," he said.

After establishing credibility at Monmouth, the hospital asked NAPA to get involved in pain management in 2010. Monmouth wanted to improve its HCAHPS for pain management, and the hospital worked with NAPA to implement a plan of action.

"What started as pain management became how to take better care of our joint patients and later our spine patients as well," said Dr. Klein.

The main goal was for patients to feel less pain while maintaining mobility and reducing the number of hours or days patients were in the hospital. To reach that goal, the hospital collaborated with NAPA on several changes, including doing away with epidurals and moving to regional blocks, which caused the hospitals fall rate and complication rate to go down. The hospital also added a 24/7 pain nurse practitioner to ensure patients with pain were seen immediately.

As a result, the hospital improved its pain management orthopedic HCAHPS percentile rank. In recent years, Monmouth has ranked in the 90th percentile.

More articles on patient satisfaction:

The secret sauce to improving patient satisfaction
Study finds empathy impacts patient satisfaction more than wait times
Are patient satisfaction surveys doing more harm than good?

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