Patient Experience Expert to Present 'The Power of Wow!' in Health Care Servic...( SOUTH BEND Ind. March 27 /- As ho...)

SOUTH BEND, Ind., March 27 /PRNewswire/ -- As hospital leaders prepare for the public release of patient experience data as mandated by Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (http://www.cms.hhs.gov ) ; patient experience improvement expert Mary P. Malone is offering insights about how to improve health care delivery for patients and families. Data from the H-CAHPS (http://www.cahps.ahrq.gov ) survey will be posted to the government's Hospital Compare web site (http://www.hospitalcompare.hhs.gov ) in late March. This is the first time that standardized measures of patients' experiences with hospital care will be reported to the public.

A nationally recognized speaker and author, Mary P. Malone, MS, JD, (http://www.maloneadvisoryservices.com ) is scheduled to present 'The Power of Wow!' on April 10, 2008 at the Society for Healthcare Consumer Advocacy Annual Conference in St. Louis, MO. The session will focus on the competitive need for hospitals to improve patient and family experiences by providing extraordinary service moments for their customers. Malone, who has visited nearly 1,000 hospitals and health organizations, will also share dozens of best practice ideas she's collected from top performers.

"Beginning this spring, health care consumers will have unprecedented access to the performance of hospitals on patient experience surveys," says Malone, president of Malone Advisory Services. "As a result, hospitals are becoming increasingly focused on making improvements in this area."

"The reality is that most hospitals are already doing a good job in customer service," says Malone. "While we can all point to service breakdowns, the best-performing hospitals recognize that the challenge is to create special
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