Best Hospital Practices Among High-Performing Healthcare Institutions

Johns Hopkins researchers discovered that the little things a hospital can do goes a long way for the patient.

In a recent study that examined 53 hospitals across the US, researchers found that the top-ranking hospitals for patient experiences of care shared 3 qualities: “a devotion to consistency, personal and focused interactions with patients, and a culture that demands involvement of all levels of caregivers and services.”

“It’s not just about getting the physicians involved, or the nurses,” lead study author Hanan Aboumatar, MD, MPH, an assistant professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and a member of the Johns Hopkins Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality, said in a statement. “Everyone involved at the hospital, all the way up to top leadership, has to place a high priority on the needs of patients and their families.”

The Johns Hopkins research team sent letters and questionnaires to 169 chief executive officers of institutions listed on the December 2012 Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems survey, which ranks hospitals on terms of high-performance and improvement.

Among their many findings, the report indicated that:

• 77% of hospitals said that the commitment to the patient and his or her relatives was a key reason of success, calling it a part of the hospital’s culture
• 83% of hospitals identified proactive nurse rounds to be a playmaker in hospital’s high performance
• Many highly ranked hospitals promoted specific practices or behaviors consistently, such as making eye-contact or sitting at a patient’s bedside

The 53 hospitals that responded to the survey fairly represented the varying sizes and types of hospitals as a whole, where small, medium, and large hospitals could be divided almost evenly among the responses. Half of the responding hospitals were teaching hospitals and 37% of them were located in the Midwest.