Natasha Epissina, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government

My internship at the Boston Public Health Commission offered me the opportunity to learn a lot about public health, patient satisfaction, hospital administration, and general management principles. Among others, I learned what determines the satisfaction of patients in the hospital and how satisfaction differs by patient characteristics such as payer group, age, emergency and planned admission. I also became increasingly aware of the decisions senior hospital management have to make, how they approach trade-offs, and how they manage competing demands from donors, funders, community stakeholders, staff and patients.

Data on how patient satisfaction varies by ethnicity, by payer group, by zip code where the patient lives, by length of stay in the hospital and by whether the admission was due to an emergency or planned
Summaries of the results from interviews with senior and middle management, physicians, nurses, phlebotomists, housekeeping staff and patients about what they believe affects patient satisfaction and their views on what changes are necessary to improve patient satisfaction with the care they receive
I also provided a summary of my ‘outsider’s perspective’ observations about the determinants of patient satisfaction, based on best practice described in the literature, interviews, and hours spent observing the functioning of hospital Units and Specialty areas