Measuring Up

Good Shepherd is dedicated to constant improvement—improvement in quality of care and service, improvement in patient and staff safety, improvement in efficency.  We seek to do more things for our patients, to do them better and more promptly, and to do them in a fiscally responsible manner.  Our organization is never satisfied with the status quo.  To improve, we need to be able to carefully define and measure the current situation, or else we cannot say whether things improve or only just change. 

Dennis E. Burke

Good Shepherd President & CEO

Quality Measures

Good Shepherd submits information to the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to participate in their new Hospital Compare  program. It shows compliance with 16 measures for 4 common hospital admissions for heart failure, a heart attack, pneumonia and surgical infection prevention. Note that some data are too small to show, and much of what does show are few cases. You may view this data at www.hospitalcompare.hhs.gov.

Patient Satisfaction

Good Shepherd is eager to hear what the community we serve thinks about how we're doing. We use the Rural Performance Management (RPM) program to measure patient satsfaction in all hospital service areas except our emergency room. RPM satisfaction surveys are distributed to patients here at Good Shepherd with a request that they be dropped in a collection box on your way out. The surveys have a section for comments. The numerical satisfaction levels and your comments are often the first step toward changes in the way we care for you, and we appreciate your taking the time to help us serve you better. You can always ask any staff member for a survey if you are not offered one during your visit.

Our emergency room satisfaction measurement is conducted in a different way. Patients that visit our ER often have plenty of other things on their minds, and we prefer not to ask them about their visit until a better time. We contract with NRC-Picker to mail satisfaction surveys to ER patients. The data collected is similar to that in the RPM surveys. 

Cost Effectiveness

The Oregon Association of Hospitals & Health Systems maintains a database (called PricePoint) in which Good Shepherd participates that shows a comparison of charges among Oregon hospitals for most common procedures.