Two years ago, Girard Medical Center made patient, employee and physician satisfaction a top priority when it began its Service Excellence Initiative.
Desiree Humble, director of service excellence, said the objective was to make GMC “stand out” by providing a customer service experience that rivals the quality of care patients receive.
“We are fortunate that our administrative team and board realized that our customers have a choice when it comes to choosing an organization for their health care needs,” Humble said.
Their efforts have not gone unnoticed. A recent patient satisfaction survey conducted by health care organization Press Ganey showed that GMC’s three rural health clinics in Cherokee, Frontenac and Girard have topped the 99th percentile in patient satisfaction. Collectively, the rural health clinics rated better than 99 percent of all other facilities in the American Hospital Association’s Region 6 database.
“This is a huge achievement and I am extremely proud of our clinic staff and physicians,” said Lisa Gray, director of Community Nursing Services. “They have all pulled together as a team and our patients and their families are benefiting from it.”
Girard Medical Center, through its partnership with Press Ganey, provides a survey to almost every patient within seven to 10 days of their service.
The information gathered in the survey is compiled and compared to scores of all of the 7,000 health care organizations in the Press Ganey database. They are then given a percentile rank based on how they compare to their competitors.
“It is extremely important that our patients take the time to complete the survey and mail it back to Press Ganey,” Humble said. “We really do rely on this information to determine what we are doing well and even more importantly, to identify areas where we need to improve.
“We have the ability to select who our peer groups are and we have selected to compare ourselves to other facilities in Region 6 of the American Hospital Association,” Humble said. “This would include any of the other local facilities who are also clients of Press Ganey and would give us a clear picture of how well we are performing in our immediate area.”
Kenny Boyd, GMC CEO, praised the clinics and their staff’s dedication to quality service.
“I’d like to congratulate our clinics for their dedication in helping Girard Medical Center achieve our goal of being number one in service,” Boyd said. “These scores are reflective of our employee’s dedication to providing the best patient care experience our patients deserve.”
This is not the first time that GMC has been recognized for patient satisfaction. The emergency department has had a “long standing” run of patient satisfaction scores in the 90th percentile, according to GMC officials. Inpatient services also recently jumped into the 90th percentile.
