Chip Robinson and Sandra Hegland describe why patients rank this hospital among the best in California.

In 2002, the nation’s largest publicly reported and most comprehensive hospital patient survey of its kind took place in California. Of the 385 general acute care hospitals invited to participate in the Patients’ Evaluation of Performance in California (PEP-C), 181 agreed to survey their patients. Of those 181 hospitals, Bakersfield Heart Hospital ranked third highest in overall patient experience.

Sandra Hegland

New look
Bakersfield Heart Hospital, originally conceived by a group of local physicians including cardiac surgeons and cardiologists in 1994, would have never become a reality if not for MedCath, a healthcare management company that has management responsibility and partnership interest in 11 hospitals and 24 joint ventures primarily in cardiac diagnostic and treatment facilities, some of which are in partnership with not-for-profit hospitals.

The physician group first conceived of the idea of a cardiac hospital in response to the local shortage of emergency services and inpatient beds for cardiac patients. After visiting a cardiac hospital built by Medcath in Texas, the group decided it wanted to do something similar in Bakersfield.

After cutting through years of red tape, Bakersfield Heart Hospital finally opened its doors in 1999. “Our physician group fought some significant battles for this hospital,” COO Chip Robinson said. “By the time we opened, they had a major emotional investment in this hospital and a dedication to provide the very best patient care.”

The new facility immediately stood out from the competition, having incorporated the latest in medical technology and MedCath’s unique, patient-focused design. “It’s very decentralized,” said VP of clinical services Sandra Hegland. “For example, there is no great big nurses’ station connected to long hallways of patient rooms. Our nurses’ stations are set up outside the rooms of the patients the nurse is caring for. Patients are never more than 10 to 15 feet from their nurse’s station.”

All of Bakersfield’s patient rooms are private, monitored, and double as telemetry units. This allows the hospital to follow the universal bed concept: patients don’t change beds to move from critical care to telemetry to med-surg, care is changed around them, allowing them to stay in one bed for their entire stay (state regulations permitting). Given the unique design, it’s no wonder Bakersfield Heart scored a 91 in the PEP-C survey’s physical comfort category—among the very highest of all hospitals.

Personal contact
MedCath’s patient care model serves as the companion piece to Bakersfield Heart’s unique facility.

Under the hospital’s care model, each patient is assigned a nurse and nursing assistant. The nurse and assistant become the primary contacts and care givers for the patient, which allows for the development of more personal relationships. “That helps us to provide the best care possible to the patient,” Hegland said.

To enable such care, Bakersfield opened its doors with one of the highest nurse-to- patient ratios in California. Hegland said it’s been a challenge to maintain the high standard amid the nation’s nursing shortage crisis, particularly when California has the second lowest ratio of working nurses to patients in the country. But thanks to the hospital’s design, care model, and patient-focused culture fostered by the physician partners, Bakersfield Heart retains the vast majority of nurses it hires.

“They like the personal contact they can give patients,” Robinson said. “We often hear from our nurses that they enjoy working here because they can do what they were trained to do and what they wanted to do when they became nurses.”

But the nursing shortage crisis is expected to become worse before it gets better. According to a study by the University of California, San Francisco, the Kern County region of the state currently has a shortage of roughly 3,200 nurses. The study projects that number to surge to more than 15,000 by 2030.

Bakersfield Heart Hospital is preparing for the anticipated nursing crunch by being proactive. Under an innovative recruiting campaign led by Hegland and guided by a study from the US Health Resources and Services Administration, the hospital is reaching out to states with nursing surpluses. “They not only get the opportunity to work for a great hospital, they get to come to sunny California,” Hegland said.