About this Measure
Inpatient Experience (also known as Patient Satisfaction) looks at the percentage of inpatients who indicate they would definitely recommend Southcoast to their family and friends on our Patient Experience Survey.
This measure only looks at results from inpatients — patients who are admitted to the hospital. It does not include outpatients or Emergency Department patients.
A higher score is better for this measure.
What is a Benchmark?
Southcoast compares all of its internal quality measures against benchmarks to help gauge our performance. Benchmarks are usually an external suitable comparison group, such as a national average, or an expected target set by an external agency. When none are available, Southcoast sets its own internal performance goals.
This benchmark: The benchmark for this measure comes from Healthstream, a private company that processes patient satisfaction surveys, known as Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) surveys, for hundreds of hospitals in the U.S., including Southcoast. The benchmark is a national average from Healthstream's database of results.
Like many hospitals nationwide, Southcoast used the HCAHPS survey, which was created by the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to provide a standardized survey instrument and data collection methodology for measuring patients' perspectives on hospital care.
Learn more about the HCAHPS survey initiative [PDF document].
What Does This Mean?
A patient's experience with our hospital is very important to us. We would like every patient to be able to "definitely recommend" Southcoast to their family and friends. Southcoast already performs significantly better than the national average, but we would like to do even better.
How to Compare This Measure: Hospitals often rate patient experience (or satisfaction) scores from their surveys in different ways. A common practice is to combine the scores of "excellent," "very good" and "good" into their patient satisfaction scores.
At Southcoast, our patient experience score reports only those who would "definitely recommend." We only focus on the "excellent" scores — that is what we strive to achieve.
What Southcoast is Doing to Improve this Measure
Southcoast is committed to providing our patients with the most positive experiences possible. Our Patients & Partners First! initiative provides our employees and physicians with tools and training to improve customer service and communication with patients and their families. Results from our Patient Experience Surveys helps us continually determine better ways to enhance the patient experience.
A Note About Our Data
All data on this site are aggregate data for all Southcoast Hospitals sites.
Trend for this Measure
This chart shows how this measure has changed over the past 12 months.
Why is the red "National Average" line a straight line? National averages are reported once a year and updated annually. Therefore the "National Average" trend line remains a straight line over the 12-month period.
Contact Us
Quality and patient safety is extremely important to Southcoast Hospitals. Let us know whether this information is helpful or how we could better serve you.
Use our Feedback Form to contact us if you have any questions or comments.
