According to a national survey, patients receiving inpatient care at The Westerly Hospital rated the Hospital at or above national and state averages.  On March 28, The Westerly Hospital’s patient satisfaction performance was made public on a website tool used for other hospital quality of care measures.  The site is called Hospital Compare (www.hospitalcompare.hhs.gov) and allows consumers to compare hospital performance and choose healthcare organizations based on survey results.  

The Westerly Hospital sends surveys to a random sample of patients after they are discharged and the results are submitted to CMS quarterly.  The purpose of this survey is to provide a standardized way to measure patient satisfaction and patient perspectives about their hospital stay. 

Specifically, the survey includes 27 questions which are bundled and reported in 10 composite scores which reflect patients’ satisfaction with a particular area of care.  These areas are:  communication with nurses, communication with physicians, responsiveness of hospital staff, pain management, communication about medications, cleanliness of the hospital environment, quietness of the hospital environment, discharge information, overall rating of the hospital, and willingness to recommend the hospital.

The questions on the survey ask the patient to report on how frequently something occurred, i.e., “always,” “usually,” “sometimes,” or “never.”  Reported on the Health Compare website will be the percentage of respondents who indicated that a particular action “always” occurred, as this answer most strongly indicates a patient’s overall satisfaction; for example, what percentage of respondents indicated a “doctor carefully listened to them” as part of the “communication with physicians” portion of the survey.

The table below shows The Westerly Hospital’s results compared with RI and U.S. averages.  The results of the survey show that The Westerly Hospital meets or exceeds national and state averages in all areas of this national survey.

Survey measure	Westerly Hospital	State Average	National Average
Overall rating of hospital	69%	63%	63%
Willingness to recommend hospital	69%	67%	67%
Communication with nurses	76%	74%	73%
Communication with doctors	83%	79%	79%
Responsiveness of hospital staff	67%	62%	60%
Pain Management	68%	68%	67%
Communication about medicines	58%	58%	58%
Cleanliness of hospital environment	82%	70%	68%
Quietness of hospital environment	58%	48%	54%
Discharge Information ***	83%	81%	79%

*** Unlike the other scores, this score reflects the percentage of respondents who answered Yes versus No.