The Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey provides important data from patient responses to surveys measuring their experiences with the Mount Sinai Health System. The Office of Patient Experience has been using this data since 2010 to better understand the patient experience within the Health System, while care teams use it to gain insight into the challenges of patients and staff, and to determine how best to solve them. After reviewing patient voice data captured through HCAHPS in 2023, The Mount Sinai Hospital’s 7 East unit, a cardiology team with a 35-bed capacity, made a number of changes that led to a significant improvement in its score.
Beth Oliver, DNP, RN, FAAN, Chief Nurse Executive and Senior Vice President, Cardiac Services, Mount Sinai Health System, commended 7 East for its outstanding Patient Experience scores in 2023. “At Mount Sinai Fuster Heart Hospital, our patient experience mission statement, ‘Where you’re the heart of the matter,’ guides us,” says Ms. Oliver. “7E not only surpassed its HCAHPS targets but also consistently prioritizes patients and families, ensuring that each patient receives not just exceptional care, but an unwavering sense of compassion and support throughout their journey with us.”
The team’s success was led by its exceptional leader, Carmela Marasigan, RN, BSN, MPH, Nurse Manager, 7 East, The Mount Sinai Hospital. “Patient experience is the core of everything we do in health care,” says Ms. Marasigan, who has led the team for more than a year. “It is what drives us to do the right thing for our patients. Our standards, policies, and procedures are all geared toward providing a safe environment for our patients and a positive-and-optimal patient experience.”
The 7 East team (front, from left): Sheryll Salvilla, RN, Clinical Nurse; Mansi Patel, RN, Clinical Nurse; John Schwartz, RN, Clinical Nurse; (back, from left): Leon Kohan, RN, Clinical Nurse; Yatman Wong, RN, Clinical Nurse
To improve its scores, the team combined a number of initiatives: daily huddles, whiteboards, and leadership rounding. Daily huddles are short (no longer than four minutes) daily meetings that help raise situational and environmental awareness among teams. During each huddle, the team discusses three quick topics (announcement, reminder, and a shout-out for encouragement), in addition to standard topics.
“I use it as an opportunity to encourage the team to start the shift on a positive note and end the huddle with a ‘Go team!’ or ‘We got this!’ or ‘Stay awesome!’” explains Ms. Marasigan.
Whiteboards are an inexpensive and simple tool that help patients understand and communicate, and among elderly patients, serve as a memory aid. “These patients are inundated with information and meet so many different people with different roles throughout their stay in the hospital, so we use our whiteboards in 7 East to write things down and help them remember who is who,” Ms. Marasigan says.
During leadership rounding, the team leader meets with patients to get their feedback. “This is when I hear the patients commend the staff and the compassionate care they provide them,” she says. “It is one of the most rewarding and important parts of the patient experience.”
These initiatives may seem simple, but the team’s consistent dedication to making them effective is anything but. “For us to gauge if these initiatives are working, we need to be able to benchmark them,” says Ms. Marasigan. “That’s why it’s imperative that I regularly monitor the HCAHPS scores so that I am able to see if I have an opportunity to improve our processes.”
Leadership also plays a valuable role in making the initiatives work, and ensuring Mount Sinai’s core values—teamwork, creativity, agility, safety, quality, and empathy—are upheld.
“As a unit leader, we set the tone for the unit,” says Ms. Marasigan. “It is our responsibility to empower our staff to exercise our values. Therefore, it is imperative that we model a behavior that shows patient experience as our very top priority.”
In our patients’ own words
“My nurse was an exceptionally outstanding and caring nurse. I am a former licensed practical nurse myself, so it is with knowledge that I say she is exceptional, professional, and very loving.”
− 7 East patient, The Mount Sinai Hospital