Brigham and Women's Hospital: "Moving the Needle" Takes People, Processes, and Leadership

Brigham and Women's Hospital is a 777-bed nonprofit, teaching hospital located in Boston, Massachusetts. Scores on the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey show that it is a leading hospital nationally on measures of patient satisfaction. Since 2002, the hospital has followed three strategies to improve patient satisfaction: allocating significant new funding for quality measurement and process improvement work, including establishing a Center for Clinical Excellence; developing a management information system for hospital leaders that tracks patient and family experiences, along with other hospital performance indicators; and seeking to enhance patients' experiences by working with frontline staff, including implementing new recruitment, training, management, and improvement strategies.