HCAHPS Version of Jeopardy: Coming Soon to a Hospital Near You

August 23, 2013

Welcome to the game of “Jeopardy 2,” the HCAHPS version of the most popular quiz game on television! Today, we are going to provide some online clues and you have to guess the appropriate HCAHPS question to match the clue.

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HCAHPS Scores and Curry

August 16, 2013

In Indian cooking, curry is a generic word for “stew” — many spices put together in mysterious ways that result in a taste that is a combination of sweet and hot. The relationship I see between HCAHPS scores and curry is that the questions are the spices and the outcomes are as mysterious as the final taste of a fine curry.

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PTSD: When Memories Live in the Present

When I was a child, I had bad dreams — dreams that would wake me up. I’d go into my Mom’s room and she would walk me back to bed.

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The Love Hate Relationship with Patient Television

Years ago when we were doing educational workshops and performing concerts at hospitals, one of our clients was a non-profit psychiatric facility that had both inpatient and outpatient services. They

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I Witness: My Under-the-Cover Patient Experience

July 12, 2013

Having just spent 10 days in the hospital with E. coli, enteritis, acute colitis, a urinary tract infection, and septicemia, I have great tales to tell about my patient experience.

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Sweden Hits the Abyss of Private Healthcare & the Customer Model

July 5, 2013

Our final week prior to returning to the U.S. was spent in Stockholm, Sweden. My husband and business partner Dallas Smith, who speaks fluent Swedish and has spent many years

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Good Sounds, Bad Sounds: What Matters for Hospital Noise

June 28, 2013

You may have seen the article in the Wall St. Journal a couple of weeks ago on hospital noise.  Instead of focusing on sounds that are too loud, annoying, and

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From Qatar: The Universality of Nursing

June 14, 2013

“It is when we include caring and love in our work and in our life that we discover nursing, like teaching, is more than just a job; it is also

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Caught Between the Healthcare Have & Have-Nots

May 31, 2013

My husband Dallas and I are in Israel this week, on our way to Jordan and Qatar. A conversation came up around the differences between the U.S. healthcare system and

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What Informs the Patient Experience?

May 24, 2013

Continuing from my last post, I am on the same path, telling the same story, this time adding more density to the argument. There are three critical factors that inform

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