Passion and purpose: Taking healthcare to new levels

Guest post by Derrick Suehs, chief quality officer of Crouse Hospital in Syracuse, N.Y.

What's the difference between good patient care and great patient care? What makes a patient describe her physician as "like family"? What causes a patient to describe his nurse as "angelic" while demanding another to be terminated?

Over my 30 years in healthcare, I've met with numerous patients and their families.

I recently started thinking about why it is that some patients love their physicians and others do not. Or, why they speak so highly of one hospital and absolutely refuse to ever return to another.

I have had a husband ask me after his wife of 35 years passed away, "Why didn't your hospital care about my wife?" I have heard a woman in her 30s swear that her physician was heartless and say she would never seek care from her again (and then highly praise another physician).

I've also seen a wife be so grateful for how the staff cared for her husband, even though he passed away on their watch. She graciously donated a large sum of money to the hospital foundation a few weeks later, yet that was the only time she'd been in that hospital.

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