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Research and Evaluation Research and Evaluation Consultation Services Do you have programs that you know are great, but don’t know how to convince others? Whether it’s a single patient centered care initiative, or the way your approach to patient centered care is working hospital-wide, there are a number of things you can do to demonstrate the worth, value or success of your ventures. Working interactively, we can help you determine whether other studies have been undertaken that support your ideas and programs. We will work with you to decide the best method to demonstrate whether your program is successful, and in addition we can help you to team up with other sites to assess how your program(s) compare to other similar programs or whether your program has broader application outside of your hospital or clinics context. As we continue pursuing patient centered care, we need to produce convincing evidence that shows the value of delivering this kind of care. Whether it be designing a survey to get the pulse of your patients, evaluating the success of a program, or conducting a controlled study to compare standard of care with a new initiative, we are here to help you translate this goal into action by tailoring a process to your needs, guiding you through the steps and assisting you in acquiring the resources necessary to move forward.
The success of any healthcare organization relies on the relationships it builds with several important groups – its employees, patients, community members and physicians. That is why it is crucial to understand the principal drivers that lead to high levels of satisfaction, a good reputation, a safe environment, and employer and hospital of choice status. The Planetree team can assist you in developing and administering a variety of surveys that assess your hospital’s current standing with employees, patients, physicians, and residents of the local community. We can support your organization’s efforts to increase employee satisfaction and customer loyalty and create the safest environment possible for your patients through results-oriented survey instruments and actionable management consulting. Our survey team has over 20 years of experience in the healthcare field with a focus on quality, service and patient safety. We offer phone, web and paper-based surveys to ensure that the right customizable method is used for your organization. Your results are delivered to you in a matter of weeks, allowing you to respond to pressing needs when it matter most – as soon as possible. Look to us for the following surveys: * Employee Satisfaction Let us do the work: * We guide you in selecting the appropriate survey medium. You can count on our results: * Timely Our commitment doesn't stop with the delivery of your results. We will work closely with you to optimize the Planetree model, creating a better environment for employees and patients. We believe you will find that the Planetree approach is more timely, personalized, and cost-effective than similar services offered by other vendors. Community Image Monitor Surveys This annual assessment of the perception of your hospital among residents of your primary and secondary service areas will provide you valuable information to assist in marketing efforts and program development. You will learn how your hospital is perceived versus other institutions, how consumer choice is made, your perceived strengths and weaknesses, and more. While we will design the questionnaire to your specific needs, areas which are commonly covered include: * Top-of-mind aided and unaided awareness of your hospital and of selected competitors. Our timely, telephone based survey, conducted by an independent research firm, will provide you with valuable information to identify opportunities within your market and issues that need to be addressed. Generally, a total sample of several hundred telephone interviews are completed with randomly selected consumers within your primary and secondary market areas who are responsible for making the health care and hospital decisions for their households. This sample will provide you with statistical validity of 95% + or - 5%. Employee Satisfaction Surveys With the high cost of recruitment and training compounded by shortages in nursing and other health care positions, retention of qualified individuals is a critical business strategy. A key to understanding the driving force behind employee turnover starts by gathering useful, relevant information from your employees. A Planetree employee satisfaction survey can assist you in your efforts. Some of the dimensions covered in the Planetree employee satisfaction survey include: * The employee orientation process In addition to the standard report, a section benchmarking your hospital against a Planetree peer group can also be included. While we will design the questionnaire to suit your specific needs, it is important to start with key questions that have strong benchmark potential assuring consistency, quality and testing reliability. We provide you with the tools to ensure that you collect a representative sample with statistical validity of 95% + or - 5%. This survey can be administered on paper or via the Internet. In-patient and Emergency Room Satisfaction Surveys Our in-patient and emergency room satisfaction surveys are instrumental in monitoring your hospital’s quality of care and services. They will provide you with the data you need to understand your patient’s perceptions, thus initiating positive outcomes that meet or exceed your patients’ highest expectations. Three key patient-centered areas covered in the survey include: * Patient satisfaction with medical staff and services provided Our timely, telephone based survey, conducted by an independent research firm, will provide you with valuable information to identify opportunities within your market and issues that need to be addressed. The same number of telephone interviews is conducted each month for ease of comparison and trend analysis. Verbatim comments from patients can be included if desired. Any individual patients requesting follow-up calls from the hospital to discuss issues and concerns are emailed immediately to your contact, so that service recovery efforts can be initiated in a timely manner. Reports of results are prepared and delivered within three weeks of each concluding month. We begin by providing you with a standard questionnaire to ensure that you include questions that have strong benchmarking potential to assure consistency, quality and testing reliability, and then we customize the survey to meet your unique needs. Sample sizes are determined that will provide you with statistical validity of 95% + or - 5%. Patient Safety Assessment Survey Patient safety is a critical component of quality in health care environments today. Prevention of patient injury, through early and appropriate response to evident and potential problems, is the key to patient safety. Planetree can assist you in auditing your culture for patient safety opportunities using the public domain survey tool developed by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). The survey is designed to provide hospital officials with a means of assessing the extent to which their cultures emphasize the importance of patient safety, facilitate open discussion of error, encourage error reporting, and create an atmosphere of continuous learning and development. The survey provides a level of detail that helps hospitals identify specific areas of strength and areas for improvement at both the unit-level and hospital level. 1. Overall perceptions of safety. In addition to comparing your hospital's results on each item, you can also obtain a summary view of how your hospital compares to other hospitals. We begin by providing you with a standard questionnaire obtained directly from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) to ensure that you include questions that have strong benchmarking potential to assure consistency, quality and testing reliability, and then we customize the survey to meet your unique needs. Sample sizes are determined that will provide you with statistical validity of 95% + or - 5%. Patient-Centered Quality and Safety In 2001, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) identified “patient-centered” and “safe” as two of the six aims for a high quality health care system, but years later there is still little consensus on how these two aims relate to one another. The IOM described “patient-centered” as “providing care that is respectful of and responsive to individual patient preferences, needs, and values and ensuring that patient values guide all clinical decisions” and safe as “avoiding injuries to patients from the care that is intended to help them.” In 2007 the Joint Commission adopted a National Patient Safety Goal to “[e]ncourage patients’ active involvement in their own care as a patient safety strategy” by “defin[ing] and communicat[ing] the means for patients and their families to report concerns about safety and encourag[ing] them to do so.” Many of the existing initiatives related to patient-centered safety, however, focus exclusively on making suggestions to patients about what they should do to improve safety without examining how to create an ongoing partnership between patients and providers. Since 1978, Planetree has been working with hospitals and other healthcare organizations around the world to develop and implement patient-centered approaches to care, based on a solid partnership between providers and patients. Planetree helps organizations recognize the patient safety benefits of patient-centered care, maintains a listserv of affiliate quality and safety contacts, and compiles and disseminates affiliate best practices related to patient-centered quality and safety. Physician Satisfaction Surveys Physicians play a vital role as primary providers of healthcare services at your facility, so it is essential to fully understand their needs, perceptions, and levels of satisfaction with your organization. Our physician survey will provide your organization with specific, actionable data that you can use to strengthen the loyalty and satisfaction of your medical staff. Below is a list of some of the key areas that we measure in our survey: * Nursing care satisfaction We work with an independent research firm to offer a unique telephone-based survey that will assist you in identifying opportunities within your organization and establishing goals for improvement. We start with a standard set of survey questions and allow you to customize based on your specific needs. Verbatim comments to the many open-ended questions are included at no extra charge.
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