CEO Message to Employees

Patient Centered Care:  The Foundation for Our Future

Think about the last time that you experienced excellent customer service. Now, think about the last time you had this experience as a patient in a healthcare setting. For years, patients have felt that there is a disconnect between the manner in which healthcare entities plan for and provide service to them, the customer. By default, healthcare entities have designed patient care processes around the needs of its employees. As a result, the architecture of current day healthcare was not founded with the patient at the center. The ever changing healthcare environment now demands cost containment, quality, pay for performance, and patient satisfaction. This has resulted in a paradigm shift which places the patient at the center of all healthcare decision making, a term coined Patient Centered Care. The synergy of patient experience with that of patient care should be a given.  In reality, it is a concept long overdue.

Last year, we identified the need to integrate patient centered care into our culture here at Roane General Hospital (RGH). We also identified it as a key initiative for this year’s Strategic Plan. No doubt, you have heard me using the buzz words patient centered care or patient centric care a great deal lately. Why? I ask you to think about your day to day duties and the processes that you engage in as our employees. While there is undoubtedly some room for improvement, the processes, in general, work for you. When they do not, we alter them to better serve you, the employee. You may argue that most of your day to day work is patient centric but I ask you to think further. As our employees, you spend the majority of your week here, with us, amongst colleagues who are also healthcare providers. Healthcare delivery, with all of its healthcare speak and day to day, is innate to you. Now, I ask you to think back to your last healthcare experience, not as an employee but as a patient. The perspective, your patient experience, was vastly different, I am sure.  Factor in the mental and physical stressors of having a diagnostic test, a procedure, an illness, or injury. Did it seem the care you received had taken these factors into consideration? Did you feel that your care was designed to work for you?  Now, I ask you again. Do we have opportunity to retool patient care processes to become more patient centric here at RGH? 

No doubt, we all elected to work in healthcare because of THE PATIENT. The service that we provide should involve them every step of the way. Think of the discharge planning process and the patient education that we provide, from the perspective of our patient. We fully understand the information that we are providing and how the information was generated, but do they leave here really understanding how to care for themselves at home? This is just one example of how we as an organization can retool to better serve the patient. This is ultimately our mission. I challenge you to become a patient centric employee and integrate this philosophy into your day to day. I challenge you to help make patient centric care second nature within our organization.

Doug Bentz, Chief Executive Officer