St. Clair Hospital’s Emergency Department has been ranked No. 1 in the country for patient satisfaction, according to Press Ganey, an independent national survey firm. The ED had previously been ranked No. 2 nationally and No.1 across the commonwealth. St. Clair Hospital is an independent, acute care facility that provides advanced, high quality health care to more than 400,000 residents of southwestern Pennsylvania.
St. Clair attributes the No. 1 ranking to an employee-led effort to redesign processes within the ED, which recently underwent a $13.5 million expansion and renovation. Pittsburgh-based healthcare architects, IKM Incorporated designed the renovation and addition to the St. Clair Hospital Emergency Department and worked proactively with the Owner and end users developing mutually dependent facility and clinical process ‘lean’ solutions in support of a new approach of delivering emergency care.
“A change in the physical environment is a great opportunity and catalyst to change the current clinical practices in a facility,” said John Schrott, AIA, ACHA, principal healthcare architect for the project, and president of IKM. “That was the basis of design for this project/ All process and facility issues were analyzed with the express of improving all aspects of patient experience within the emergency department.”
The new No. 1 in the U.S.A. ranking is based on random surveys that were mailed to patients treated in St. Clair Hospital’s ED between April 1 and June 30, 2010. St. Clair’s ED was deemed No. 1 in the country when its survey results were compared to 279 “like-sized” EDs — those that treat 50,000 or more patients a year.