Whidbey General’s plan for a new Patient Advisory Council is a great step in the right direction for the public hospital.
The agency has been through a lot of turmoil over the last year with turnover in several top management positions and a divisive criminal case that highlighted concerns about how the hospital does business.
It’s a perfect time for a new start. It appears that change is coming to the hospital.
New CEO Geri Forbes promised to usher in an era of openness, transparency and community engagement.
Five candidates are running for two seats on the hospital board. Three of them are new candidates who hope to help reform the hospital and repair its reputation in the community.
Construction of the large expansion project is supposed to begin this year.
The formation of this new council is an opportunity for citizens to voice an opinion and participate in a way that can promote the kind of change they want to see. This council is an opportunity for the hospital’s customers to be actively involved in the hospital they help fund annually through property taxes.
The focus of the patient advisory council is to assure that policies and processes are patient friendly. That doesn’t just mean a good outcome, but that the experience is positive.
It’s encouraging to see the hospital administration taking positive steps to improve its image and its service to patients.
While Whidbey General is a public agency, it is also a business. One of the most important aspects of a business is customer service.
The hospital already keeps a close eye on patient satisfaction through data collected in voluntary questionnaires. The advisory council will allow for more of a back-and-forth dialogue between patients and caregivers.
The patients will presumably learn more about how hospitals operate and what challenges and limitations hospital administrators face. To say that the world of healthcare is complicated is an understatement, which can make meaningful change difficult at a public hospital.
Yet the biggest alteration that needs to happen isn’t so much of substance than of style. The hospital adopted the “Patients First” philosophy years ago, but that doctrine didn’t seem to extend to the hospital leadership’s interaction with the public.
Now’s the opportunity to get involved, and we hope to see a large response from the public on this endeavor.
