Patients at Rhea Medical Center said their experiences with doctors, nurses and other staff were consistently better than other area hospitals and medical centers across the nation, according to a recent survey.

Results of the recently released Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) put RMC's patient experiences above state and national averages in nearly all 10 categories of the survey, which gauges how well staff communicate with patients.

"I think it goes back to the Rhea County way of taking care of people," Rhea Medical Center Administrator Ken Croom said Thursday. "These are Rhea County people taking care of Rhea County people."

The survey, administered between July 2008 and June 2009, indicates that 74 percent of patients asked would "definitely recommend" RMC to someone else. That's six percentage points above both state and national averages.

In all, 365 patients at Rhea Medical completed the surveys.

On a scale of 1-10, with 1 being the worst and 10 being the best, 69 percent of patients surveyed rated Rhea Medical a 9 or 10. The state average was 66 percent, and the national average was 65 percent.

Only seven percent gave the hospital a rating below 6, while both state and national averages were at 10 percent.

Croom said one area he would like to see improvement was in patient discharges, specifically how quickly patients are discharged.

In the survey, 75 percent of patients said they got adequate information before being discharged, which is four percent behind the state average and six percent behind the national average.

Rhea Medical's Performance Improvement Coordinator Sue Sayre said hospital staff work hard to improve patient care in any way possible. The Customer Service Review Committee meets regularly to discuss ways to make patients' experience better, Sayre said.

"Everybody really takes ownership and tries to increase that," she said. "It's a teamwork thing."
She added that she thinks the emergency room staff has improved considerably in recent months. They've mostly focused on making sure to make rounds to all ER patients every 30 minutes, and other recent patient surveys have reflected those efforts.

Pitted against Skyridge Medical Center and Athens Regional in nearby Bradley and McMinn Counties, respectively, Rhea Medical also came out ahead.

In an older version of the HCAHPS posted on the survey's Web site, 77 percent of Rhea Medical patients said their room and bathroom were "always" clean, compared to 63 percent for the Athens hospital and 56 percent for Skyridge.

In the same survey, 75 percent of Rhea Medical patients said they would recommend the hospital, which was six percent above Athens Regional patients and 22 percent above Skyridge patients.
Croom emphasized that the survey results are a testament to the people who work at Rhea Medical.

"We have a fine staff," Croom said. "I think it's a complement to the people who raised them."

The surveys are administered by Hospital Quality Alliance, a national organization comprised of public and private companies and groups. It was formed in 2002.

Sayre said Rhea Medical has participated in the group's surveys since they began several years ago.

Michael Reneau can be contacted at michael.reneau@rheaheraldnews.com.