Just as a positive dining experience is contingent on more than the meal itself, there's a lot more to a satisfactory hospital visit than the medical outcome — and the changing health system is forcing hospitals to acknowledge that.

Through a partnership with ProPublica, an investigative journalism operation, online review giant Yelp has tapped into meaningful health care data to compliment the reviews and ratings provided by their users. That means average emergency room wait times, fines a facility may have paid, noise factors, and serious deficiencies that have been reported are all out in the open.

For hospitals, nursing homes, imaging centers, and dialysis clinics, getting high marks from patients and their families is more important than ever before. That means not only cutting down wait times and improving outcomes, but also engaging positively with patients.
A recent study out of Johns Hopkins aims to show them exactly how that can be achieved. By sending questionnaires and letters to medical personnel and CEOs from a nationwide sampling of 53 hospitals, researchers think they've exposed a few best practices for ensuring happy patients.

The researchers first identified 169 hospitals with a "top ranking" or a "most improved" designation based on their scores in the December 2012 Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems survey. Of them, 53 agreed to participate in the survey — representing a wide variety of hospital sizes and regions.

Staff members and executive leaders from hospitals that were already receiving high marks in patient satisfaction had a few things in common. They all prioritized consistency, personal interactions with patients, and a culture that demands involvement of all levels of caregivers and services.

"It's not just about getting the physicians involved, or the nurses," said Dr. Hanan Aboumatar, an assistant professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and a member of the Johns Hopkins Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality, in a statement. "Everyone involved at the hospital, all the way up to top leadership, has to place a high priority on the needs of patients and their families."

Of the respondents, 77 percent reported that a commitment to the patient and family was a vital part of their culture and a key reason for their high performance. In terms of operational satisfaction, the facilities credited quick responsiveness — in fact 83 percent of respondents cited proactive nurse rounds as a contributing factor in that success. These hospitals also promoted specific activities like making eye contact with patients and sitting at patient bedsides instead of standing over them.

A summary of the findings were published in this month's issue of the journal, Medical Care.

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