A Collaborative Effort for Better Care

GBMC is a fabulous place to have a baby and everyone knows it. Our clinical outcomes for mothers and newborns are excellent!  While our patient satisfaction scores for maternal and newborn are always among the best in inpatient units in Maryland, there is always room for improvement especially if we compare ourselves to hospitals in the Midwest and West. In these comparisons, we are still very good as we find ourselves in the top 25 percent.

Recently, Jodie Bell, RNC, BSN, IBCLC, Clinical Director, Postpartum and Newborn Nursery, got together with leaders from food and environmental services, Kelly Bechtel, General Manager of Food & Nutrition Services and David Fatokun, Quality Assurance Manager with Sodexo, and through Lean Daily Management started studying the mothers’ beliefs about their care, how their room was being maintained and their thoughts about the food.  As a team, they have been working on courtesy and friendliness and auditing their performance. They have begun to study things like how a food tray does not always have what the patient ordered or why the food that is supposed to be hot is not always hot when it is delivered.

This new higher level of collaboration and inquiry has already begun to yield results! 

In August, patient surveys scored the courtesy of the person serving their food at 92.9 (99th percentile in MD and the 80th percentile nationally) and their room cleanliness score at 90 (97th percentile in MD and the 70th percentile nationally). On the so-called “overall” HCAHPS score, where patients are asked to rate their hospital stay on a scale from 0-10, where 0 is the worst hospital ever and 10 is the best, the Maternal and Newborn Health team, so far, are now scoring 86.7 (99th percentile in MD and 94th percentile nationally)! 

I am so grateful for all of their hard work and their learning and tests of change. When you see Jodie, Kelly, David or anyone on their team please congratulate them.