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Environmental Services and Patient Transport Services are combining to improve patient rooms in the Tower and Connors Center. In conjunction with unit staff, unit associates (UA) and staff from Central Transport are collaborating to make sure patient discharges are timely, vacated rooms are thoroughly cleaned and room repairs are made.
“Unit associates and supervisors in Environmental Services are striving to improve patient rooms and the hospital environment for our patients, and one way we’re doing this is a regular review of Press, Ganey inpatient satisfaction reports,” Rick Bass, director of Environmental Services, said.
Patients routinely have given BWH rooms scores in the high 70s since BWH began using Press, Ganey inpatient satisfaction surveys. During the most recent quarter, January to March of this year, patients gave BWH inpatient rooms a mean score of 77.8 and that places the hospital in the 53rd percentile among teaching hospitals with 500 beds or more that use Press, Ganey.
“It’s a team effort with everyone pulling together,” said Bea Harris-Lane, director of Transport Services.
The team effort comes together around patient discharges. Unit coordinators and charge nurses work together to plan for discharges and room turn-around efforts. Central Transport staff now are handling most discharge transports, and this frees up UAs to begin room cleaning immediately upon discharge. The UAs approach each room with formal discharge room repair checklists available in English, Spanish and Haitian Creole. Before cleaning a room, UAs check for broken lights, leaky sinks and toilets and stained or damaged tiles. When appropriate, maintenance crews from Engineering are called in. UAs also check beds, televisions and tables to make sure everything is working properly.
In addition, Environmental Services has implemented a new auditing system to double check 50 percent of patient rooms cleaned following discharge.
Bass said the teams of UAs look forward to reviewing detailed data from Press, Ganey reports on a regular basis. “We even have a little friendly competition between UAs assigned to the Tower and CWN,” he said.
Inacia Teixeira, unit associate, looks at a satisfaction data chart.