Great Communicators: Pinckneyville Nurses Pride Themselves on Being Ranked 28th in the Nation

</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[Pinckneyville Community Hospital was ranked No. 28 out of the top 61 non-specialty, acute-care hospitals with the highest percentage of patients who reported in the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems survey that their nurses "always" communicate well.

The rankings are based on the HCAHPS survey, which allows patients to rate line items relating to their patient care experience. This particular metric covers the percent of "patients who reported that their nurses 'always' communicated well" from July 2010 to June 2011. Some hospitals were excluded from this list for a variety of reasons, including but not limited to having fewer than 100 patients complete the HCAHPS survey. Surgical and specialty hospitals were not included on the list.

The HCAHPS survey contains 18 patient perspectives on care and patient rating items that encompass eight key topics: communication with doctors, communication with nurses, responsiveness of hospital staff, pain management, communication about medicines, discharge information, cleanliness of the hospital environment, and quietness of the hospital environment. The survey also includes four screener questions and five demographic items, which are used for adjusting the mix of patients across hospitals and for analytical purposes. The survey is 27 questions in length.

Westlake Regional Hospital in Columbia, Ky. was ranked first with a 98 percent positive response. Sacred Heart Hospital on the Gulf in Port Saint Joe, Fla. was ranked No. 2. Patients' Hospital of Redding, Calif. was ranked No. 3 with 94 percent. Even nurses at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester were ranked No. 35 in the survey.