Letters

Editor's note: This letter is in response to Philip Betbeze's May 28 online column, "Don't Cut Here! Lower Inpatient Satisfaction Scores an Ominous Sign." To see the column, visit www.healthleadersmedia.com, click on the Leadership tab, then the Leadership Corner link.

Time to Grade on Patient Experience
Unfortunately, this lack of commitment to patient experience is endemic to U.S. healthcare. Importantly, patient experience scores are also tied to concepts and outcomes in patient safety. Yet complaints, concerns, insights, and other communications provided to hospitals by patients are routinely ignored, not acknowledged, and considered unimportant for both patient satisfaction purposes and patient safety purposes.

We should grade hospitals on their patient experience scores in www.hospital-compare.hhs.gov and demand that these providers reach at least a C level of performance (at the present time, few do). If our children came to us with report cards that showed D's and F's, we would be outraged at their performance and would demand—and enforce—significant changes in behavior. Yet we permit these very grades and their accompanying behavior by our health delivery system.

This is not only a matter of patient safety and patient satisfaction, but a matter of patient respect. Using the reimbursement system to ensure attention to patient experience would solidify attention to this deep concern.

Business entities that are perennially late, rude, uncommunicative, dismissive, and unresponsive to customer feedback fail quickly because of inefficiency, ineffectiveness, and lack of customers. Yet these very characteristics describe the U.S. healthcare system. Patients need to know who is getting A's in healthcare delivery. Any reform effort should give patients that information. Again, it is a matter of patient respect as well as patient satisfaction and patient safety.

Bryan A. Liang, MD, PhD, JD
UCSD School of Medicine, California Western School of Law, San Diego

Editor's note: This letter is in response to Marianne Aiello's May 19 online column, "In Defense of Grady: Why Marketing May Revive the Struggling Hospital." To see the column, visit www.healthleadersmedia.com, click on the Marketing tab, then the Marketing View link.

Why Marketing Matters
Bravo to Grady's management team for their courage to launch a marketing campaign in the face of unsophisticated and unfounded criticism. Marketing is an essential business function and a necessary component of the hospital's ultimate recovery.

I'm curious if critics feel Grady should eliminate its accounting, legal, and human resources departments. Of course not! All of these services comprise the complex operations of a healthcare company, and to cut marketing because it's not directly related to patient care is akin to an elementary school closing its cafeteria because it's not directly related to teaching.

Daniel Weinbach
Executive vice president, The Weinbach Group, Miami