By Carey Reeder | Managing Editor

Ascension St. Vincent’s Chilton Hospital once again received positive feedback from this round of Hospital Consumer Assessment for Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) scores.

The hospital uses the consumer experience, or patient satisfaction, scores as an indicator of the patient’s experience when they are under their care.

“There are varying types of surveys that are done based on the service,” Shanon Hamilton, Administrator at Ascension St. Vincent’s Chilton Hospital, said. “For example, we get surveyed for outpatient patient satisfaction, outpatient surgery patient satisfaction, emergency department patient satisfaction and inpatient patient satisfaction. Each one of those surveys is important for us to be able to understand how our associates are caring for the patients, and their perception the patients have about the service they experienced here.”

Hamilton said the goal of the hospital is to also exceed the patient’s expectations, but with that takes a lot of effort and specific follow up so the staff can understand the areas they are excelling in, and ones they can improve in. He added that the leadership and management teams at the hospital have found areas in the past where they are both excelling and need improvement through previous surveys. From there, the teams can relay to the associates on ways to improve, or for a job well done.

The overall morale between management and the associates at the hospital is high, and that is a reflection upon the amount of time the management team has been with the hospital.

“That allows us to know each other very well, and we know how to support each other,” Hamilton said. “I do think that the continuity of the leadership team helps, but we have such great associates that work at Ascension St. Vincent’s Chilton. When we are looking for people to bring onto our team, we really try to make sure they fit what we are looking for here from a customer service and experience standpoint. We want people that not only provide great care, but do it with the right spirit and attitude.”

The team that continuously tracks the HCAHPS score for the hospital reported in October that Ascension St. Vincent’s Chilton was the top-rated hospital out of the 140 Ascension hospitals for inpatient patient satisfaction.

The hospital is also continuing to be the highest rated hospital on Google in the state of Alabama with a 4.7 rating. Hamilton believes the rating is important because of how many people use google to search for things. He said he has seen patients come in and say they found services at St. Vincent’s Chilton that had a high rating through Google, and that is why they want to have their care done there.

“It is our pleasure to serve this community, and because it is our pleasure in doing so, we want to do it to a level that exceeds our consumers expectations,” Hamilton said. “We know we are not going to get it right all of the time, and we will apologize when we do not, and we will try to do it better next time.”