Interview with Decision Health

I was recently interviewed by Roy Edroso over at Decision Health about patient satisfaction, relationship-based care, and building a culture focused on a higher purpose. You can read the full interview here. Below is a short excerpt from the interview:

Part B News recently reported on how patient and employee outreach efforts, which some managers treat as nice-to-have extras, can actually improve practices’ bottom line and care performance. We talked to occupational therapist Rafael E. Salazar II, MHS, OTR/L, and president & CEO of Rehab U Practice Solutions, about patient and provider outreach in the therapy world, particularly as he experienced it while working at the Charlie Norwood VA Medical Center (CNVAMC) in Augusta, Ga. in the Rehab Service Line in the outpatient Specialty Clinic, treating veterans and coordinating clinical education for the occupational therapy department. Here are some of his thoughts:

On surveys, their uses and limits.

There is a good article published [in the Oman Medical Journal] in 2014 that showed a positive impact of patient satisfaction surveys on the quality of patient care delivery. Part of this is that patient satisfaction reflects a patient’s subjective sense of their involvement in decision making and their role as “partners” in improvement of the quality of the healthcare service.

Your patients want to feel valued, heard, and listened to. In the rehab world we talk about building a therapeutic relationship (or building rapport) – you see the patient two, three times a week for weeks on end, so building trust is huge.

But if all you plan to do is run a patient satisfaction survey, it won’t be much benefit. You should have a full quality improvement system where you’ll end up with actionable quantitative data. With pre- and post-treatment surveys, you should be able to say, “Scheduling gets a lower score,” “referrals take too long,” “patients say not enough manual therapy,” etc.  You should notice consistent trends that can be used to formulate a comprehensive performance improvement plan.

Read the rest of the article here. 

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Rafael E. Salazar II, MHS, OTR/L is the president and CEO of Rehab U Practice Solutions, a company focused on changing the way therapists do business! He has experience in a variety of rehab settings, working with patients recovering from a variety of injuries and surgeries. He worked as the lead clinician in an outpatient specialty clinic at his local VA Medical center. He also has experience as an adjunct faculty instructor at Augusta University’s Occupational Therapy Program, as a Licensed Board Member on the GA State OT Board, has served on several committees for the national OT Board (NBCOT), and as a consultant for the State of Georgia. He is also on the Board of Directors for NBCOT.

Read his full bio Here. Read about Rehab U Here.

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