Thoraxklinik Heidelberg wins award
March 2015
Thoraxklinik at Heidelberg University Hospital wins award "Germany’s best clinics 2015" / Berlin specialist for patient satisfaction analyses prepares the ranking once a year and presents an award / Thoraxklinik has been evaluating feedback for 10 years to improve quality
Thoraxklinik at Heidelberg University Hospital has now been awarded as the winner of the ranking “Germany’s best clinics 2015”. The ranking with 33 hospitals from all over Germany has been determined by the specialist for patient satisfaction analyses, anaQuestra GmbH in Berlin, in a Germany-wide comparison. The basis is feedback on the satisfaction of patients, employees and referring physicians, determined by means of a scientifically validated survey tool. The respondents are also provided the option of expressing comments and criticism in a free text field. Accordingly, a so-called “satisfaction value” can be calculated. Thoraxklinik Heidelberg, which has been conducting referral surveys since 2005 on a regular basis and additionally patient and employee surveys since 2008, scored the best values in the total of all responses. A well-balanced positive result for the fields of patients, referring physicians and employees is decisive.
Roland Fank, Commercial Director of Thoraxklinik, expresses his great satisfaction with the award: "The feedback from patients, employees and referring physicians is very valuable to us. It helps us implement change in our daily hospital routines, thus improving our quality. The current results show that it is worth our while to continue along this path.” The satisfaction analysis is a great help in doing so: The measured values are objective and reliable and show which fields require improvement measures. Usually, the success of such a measure can then already be seen in the next follow-up measurement. “This positive feedback in turn boosts the willingness among employees to pursue an improvement process”, says Fank.
"Continuous quality work through regular satisfaction measurements makes good clinics even better”, explains anaQuestra MD Kurt M. Lang. “In the top groups of the individual rankings, we keep finding the same names. The best clinics have in common that they regularly measure satisfaction and respond very quickly if even the appearance of a problem is given. Therefore, the already high satisfaction values of these clinics continue to increase even further. Their advantage over other clinics which only perform sporadic measurements and rather randomly work on improvements tends to become even greater.” Thoraxklinik already obtained high scores in the previous evaluations as well.
"Patients provide us with particularly good feedback, for instance, when it comes to their satisfaction with the competence of physicians and nurses. Referring physicians appreciate the great range of services offered by our clinic, among others”, explains Roland Fank. Most of the criticism – and that is normally the case for all clinic surveys – is voiced by the employees. But here, too, Thoraxklinik consistently obtained better scores than the average of the other clinics, e.g. in terms of satisfaction with the workplace in general or training opportunities.
Thoraxklinik – Heidelberg University Hospital
Thoraxklinik Heidelberg is a hospital of maximum care with a 100-year history and has been a certified pulmonary-cancer center as well as accredited weaning center since 2009. It is a subsidiary of Heidelberg University Hospital and works closely together with the German Cancer Research Center. The clinic is one of the partners of the National Center for Tumor Diseases Heidelberg (NCT) and one of the Heidelberg sites of the German Center for Pulmonary Research. As one of the largest pulmonary clinics in Germany, medical services and approx. 2,200 surgeries in the field of thorax diseases are performed with 310 beds as well as 4 operating rooms. A special focus (over 60%) is on the treatment of pulmonary diseases, the pleura, the mediastinum, the chest wall and adjacent regions.