Patient experience in the behavioral health setting: Key best practices throughout an organizational journey

NewYork-Presbyterian/Westchester Division, a clinical affiliate of Weill Cornell Medicine, is a 260-bed hospital providing inpatient and outpatient behavioral health care for children, adolescents, adults and older adults. From 2004-2010 the hospital’s patient experience scores on the Press Ganey® Inpatient Psychiatry Survey improved from the 14th to 53rd percentile nationally. We primarily attribute this to joining the Planetree® Affilliate Network. Planetree is a mission based not-for-profit organization that partners with healthcare organizations around the world and across the care continuum to represent the patient voice and advance how professional caregivers engage with patients and families. In 2011, hourly rounding was redesigned and tailored for the behavioral health setting. This initiative, coupled with regular Planetree education and an ongoing commitment by staff and the healthcare system to improving patient experience, contributed to a further improvement, with the hospital moving to the top ten percent of psychiatric hospitals nationally in the Press Ganey survey. In this paper, we describe the organizational journey that led to these improvements and identify learning for other hospitals, particularly in a behavioral healthcare setting.