IMC focusing on employee, patient satisfaction

Published 9:00 am Friday, October 14, 2022

As COVID-19 continues to become more manageable for healthcare providers, Iberia Medical Center has worked to stabilize its workforce, continue the expansion of its north campus and provide satisfactory experiences for emergency room patients.

That was the gist of IMC CEO Dionne Viator’s report to the Iberia Parish Council at Wednesday’s meeting where she outlined the new fiscal year budget and gave an update on the operations of the hospital to the council.

Viator said IMC is budgeting a 10 percent increase in admissions due to the increase in usage of the new emergency at the IMC North Campus, formerly the location of Dauterive Hospital.

She also told the council that the hospital has worked to increase employee salaries and benefits, including bringing the minimum wage of the hospital for full time and part time employees up to $11 per hour.

Since 2012, IMC has seen a growth in total revenue with the exception of 2016, which is the year that the North Campus was acquired.

Patient discharges declined in 2020 and 2021, which Viator said was due to the long length of time patients stayed at the hospital.

“We were full and the patient length of stay was long,” she said. “We were unable to handle all of the admissions that were needed.”

Currently, Viator said there were only four patients admitted at IMC for COVID-19 symptions, and none of those patients were in the ICU.

“We’re at a different level of managing COVID at this point,’ Viator said. “We think this is the new normal.”

Since the worst days of the pandemic have passed, Viator said IMC has focused on improving both employee and patient satisfaction. IMC performed an employee engagement survey in June using the poll group Gallup for the information, and Viator said the results of the survey put IMC at the 75th percentile. About 54 percent of employees were completely engaged at their jobs.

Viator said IMC has also worked very hard on its emergency room patient experience, ending the last fiscal year in the 86th percentile of patient satisfaction.

The opening of the North Campus emergency room has allowed for greater efficiency in emergency rooms for both campuses, Viator said.

“We had too high a volume at the Main Campus, so its helped us quite a bit,” Viator said