Hartford Business Journal

The Greater Hartford Health Care Resource Guide • 2016 – 2017 7 That's all changing at St. Francis, Hartford HealthCare and elsewhere as hospitals and physician practices focus on patient service, satisfaction, education and engagement. At Griffin Hospital in Derby, patient-centered care has been part of the culture and physical environment for decades. The hospital's parent company, Griffin Health Services Corp., includes a wholly owned subsid- iary, Planetree Inc., which Griffin Health Services CEO Patrick Charmel called the international pioneer of the patient-centered care movement. He's also chairman of Planetree's board. Planetree launched in 1978, emerging in a few units of a San Francisco hospital and became part of Griffin in 1988. Planetree developed components that it says comprise a patient-centered care facility and created a patient-centered hospital designation program for hos- pitals and other care facilities. About 1,000 care sites in 20 countries follow some level of Planetree, including Griffin and Stamford hospi- tals, with Griffin the first to be built from the ground up as a patient-centered facility when it opened in 1994. Stamford Hospital's new $450 million facility also has been built under the Planetree model. Planetree founder Angelica Thieriot, inspired by her own traumatic hospital stay in the 1970s, and her orga- nization were ahead of their time, challenging conven- tional wisdom about how patients should be treated and involved in their care, Charmel said. So was Griffin. It experimented with patient-centered care with a homelike maternity unit in its hospital in the mid-80s, liked the results and sought more patient-cen- tered ideas from Planetree in San Francisco. Hearing Griffin's commitment to build a patient-cen- tered facility from the ground up that would incorporate Planetree principles, Planetree agreed to work with Griffin, its first affiliate hospital, on the project. Griffin has served as a global example for other hospitals. While patient-centered care was nothing new to Planetree and Griffin, the Institute of Medicine's decla- ration in 2001 that quality care needed to be patient- centered "was kind of the legitimation of the patient- centered approach," Charmel said. Planetree gives hospitals a framework to implement patient-centered care, and provides support in areas like facility design, program development and staff training. Members also can network with other hospitals. The designation program is organized around bronze, silver and gold tiers, each representing incremental levels of achievement, according to Planetree's website. "We see it as aspirational," Charmel said, adding that Planetree encourages all levels of hospital commitment to patient-centered care. GRIFFIN HOSPITAL Griffin Hospital is patient-centered throughout, incorporating 10 core dimensions that Planetree says create patient- and resident-centered concepts and prac- tices including promoting patient/resident education, choice and responsibility; and offering quality dining, food and nutrition, a healing environment and integra- tive therapies/paths to well-being. "Planetree has done more healthcare consumer focus groups than any other," Charmel said, citing 8,000 groups with 50,000 consumers in 20 countries. "So we know what consumers want." Planetree-designated hospitals exceed the national averages in each publicly reported Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) category, outperform national benchmarks on the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services pro- cess of care core measures and have lower readmission rates, according to the website. In a piece Charmel co- authored in 2008 with Planetree President Susan Frampton for the Healthcare Financial Management Association, they cited a study comparing two similar hospital inpatient units over five years — one with an extensive patient-centered care program and one without. In each of the five years studied, the patient-centered inpatient unit consistently demonstrated a shorter average length of stay than the control unit and a statistically significantly lower cost per case than the control unit, among other benefits. "A lot of what we do in health care and what we've done for the last 30 years is because that's the way it's been always done — and you have to challenge the sta- tus quo…," Charmel said. "So the pioneers like Griffin and Planetree have broken down a lot of the barriers and some of those barriers … are physical." For example, nurses stations aren't separated by bar- riers from patients and family. There's an openness to nursing units, including residential kitchens where vol- unteers bake muffins, apples and breads and create smells of home, not of an antiseptic hospital, where patients and family can congregate, have coffee and talk. There's attention to natural light and building design that fosters interaction between caregivers and patients and family. "We're really trying to heal the mind, the body and the spirit," Charmel said. There's art on the walls and concert-level performers, including harpists, violinists and guitarists, who play All You Need Is One. All You Need Is One. 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A Continuum of Care. 75 Great Pond Road | Simsbury, CT 06070 | www.McLeanCare.org Community matters. And always has. As a not-for-profit senior living and healthcare continuum with over four decades of providing exceptional care in a supportive community, your comfort and quality of life are our primary focus — it was how we began and how we continue to grow. Care matters. Consistently recognized for top performance in healthcare quality and service excellence, you can be confident that our promise to care for you or your loved ones is a promise we deliver, every day. Stability matters. At the heart of our commitment to you is the ability to meet the needs of our campus and community, while staying true to our mission and remaining financially sound — providing both you and your family with lasting peace of mind. continued on page 8 Patrick Charmel, Griffin Health Services CEO.

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