What is quality?
"Quality" means different things to different people. If you ask someone to define the word quality in a hospital, you may get several different answers.
Patients often describe quality in terms of customer service, bedside manner, good food, nurse attentiveness and ease of access to facilities. We believe the patient experience is an important part of the healing process. As a part of our commitment to improving the patient experience, Southeast Georgia Health System conducts ongoing patient experience surveys. These surveys form the basis of our efforts to refine our customer service strategy.
For doctors and medical staff, ensuring "quality" means measuring clinical outcomes, learning about and using scientifically-based medicine, often called "best practice" medicine or "evidence-based" medicine, and ensuring patient safety. Our leadership team, physicians and team members are dedicated to measuring and analyzing our performance and identifying opportunities to improve.
Hospital administrators strive for quality in terms of finance, corporate compliance with federal and state regulations, supply management, and plant operations. Nurses and other employees see job satisfaction as an important measure of quality.
Another aspect of quality health care is community involvement. Southeast Georgia Health System's community outreach programs offer early detection screenings and disease prevention education, often for free or at a nominal charge.
Quality reports
Southeast Georgia Health System is committed to providing consumers with accurate and honest information about clinical processes and the patient experience. We believe that well-informed patients take a more active role in improving their health condition. Review how Southeast Georgia Health System performs compared to other hospitals in the nation.
Providing scientifically based care is important to ensuring patients receive appropriate and timely treatment of their medical conditions. Clinical quality measures indicate what percentages of our patients receive recommended courses of treatment for specific diseases. The Health System reviews medical records and compiles data to be compiled and benchmarked with hospitals at the state and national level. This data is obtained from both Medicare and non-Medicare patients and is submitted through an impartial vendor in order to assure the accuracy and confidentiality of the information.
The evidence-based recommended care may not always be the best path of care for every patient. Our physicians will take into account allergies, drug interactions and other existing medical conditions, any of which may cause them to follow a course of treatment different than the norm. Patients who are not on an evidence-based care path are not included in the scoring.
Number of records reviewed for these indicators:
- Camden average (01/16-06/16): 7 cases
- Brunswick average (01/16-06/16): 82 cases
- Georgia average* (01/15-12/15): NA
- US average* (01/15-12/15): NA
Thrombolytic Therapy:
- Camden average (01/16-06/16): 0% (1 case)
- Brunswick average (01/16-06/16): 44% (9 cases)
- Georgia average*: 81%
- US average*: 86%
*Georgia and U.S. average percentages are delayed 6 to 7 months.
What does this indicator mean?
Thrombolytic Therapy: The percentage (%) of patients diagnosed and treated for ischemic stroke and who arrived at our Emergency Department within 2 hours of their stroke symptoms beginning and receive medication to dissolve blot clots that cause the blockages in blood flow to the brain. To be most effective, stroke patients should receive IV-rtPA within 3 hours of the onset of stroke symptoms. Thus, reducing the time to administration of IV-rtPA in the Emergency Department is critical to providing the best emergency care for stroke patients.
Why this information is important to you
When deciding where to receive health care, you and your doctor need to feel confident that the choice is right for you. One important consideration is the quality of care. Are patients receiving the most appropriate and effective care? Is the care timely and focused on your needs as a patient? Is it safe? This kind of information can be hard to find. Southeast Georgia Health System is giving you the most current information possible in a user-friendly format right from our website.
Patient experience
At Southeast Georgia Health System, we measure the quality of our patients' hospital visits and physician practice experiences through nationally standardized surveys. Eligible patients may receive a paper or electronic survey following their hospital stay, outpatient surgery, Emergency Care Center visit or physician appointment. These surveys do a deep dive into the care patients receive and include questions regarding communication with their doctors, understanding their medication instructions, and the coordination of their health care needs. We use the responses from these surveys to identify areas of opportunity and highlight areas of excellence in our organization.
You may view our hospital patient experience survey data on Hospital Compare by clicking on the links below. These links will take you away from our website.
You may view our physician practice patient survey responses in the form of ratings and reviews on our Provider Directory.
Going "transparent"
FAQs
There are two reasons why you may not see ratings and reviews posted on a provider’s profile:
- The provider may not be an employed physician, but rather an independent member of our medical staff with privileges at one of our hospitals.
- Only physicians with 30 or more reviews will have a star-rating and comments displayed on their profile. In this way, we ensure a well-rounded number of true patient experiences comprise the physician’s star rating.