Lewis-Gale Med Center EVS Team Wins Hospital HCAHPS Education Award
August 18th, 2010
At the end of June, Lewis-Gale Medical Center in Salem, Virginia, held the first of three scheduled HCAHPS education fairs. The fairs center around a contest in which various departments throughout the hospital are tasked with demonstrating, through poster presentation, how they practice the "I Care" Model on a daily basis. The department with the best presentation, as decided by members of Administration and the iMPaCT Committee, receive a $500 prize, to be spent as agreed-upon by the employees of the winning department.
EVS was one of the 13 departments randomly selected to participate in the first fair. The EVS team assembled a presentation that educated all hospital staff on their efforts to increase patient satisfaction through utilization of the "I Care" Model, and HHS's A.W.A.R.E program. Topics covered in their presentation included:
♦ Service runs 3 times per day
♦ Patient room buffing
♦ "Sorry I Missed You" cards
♦ "Clean Room" door banners
♦ Scripting for all patient interactions
♦ Management rounds for new admits, "Sorry I Missed You" cards, and discharges
♦ The "No Pass" rule, and
♦ The I CARE BEAR
The layout included blue & white M&M's that read "I CARE" and displayed a picture of the I CARE BEAR. Additionally, picto-cards were used to show services performed daily. The picto-cards included recordings voiced by housekeepers and floor techs that educated hospital staff on the scripting used by EVS employees.
The EVS presentation tied with LGMC's Lab department for 1st place! Two more HCAHPS fairs will occur between now and November. And in December, the hospital will hold a "Grand Champion" vote-off in which all hospital staff will pick the best presentation from the 1st place winners of all three fairs.
"Putting together a presentation that educates the hospital staff on all the things we do daily to improve patient satisfaction was the easy part," says Sean Paris, EVS Director at Lewis-Gale Medical Center. "However, we've received so many good suggestions from our employees on how to spend the prize money, deciding what to purchase for our department will be the hard part."
