When healthcare is at its best, hospitals are four-star hotels, and nurses, personal butlers at the ready - at least, that's how many hospitals seem to interpret a government mandate.

This actually, in terms of posting the staffing plans, is about not having the government tell hospitals and nurses how to staff their units. It's about providing the right care, not the same care.

When Department of Health and Human Services administrators decided to base 30 percent of hospitals' Medicare reimbursement on patient satisfaction survey scores, they likely figured that transparency and accountability would improve healthcare.

Local healthcare providers are interested in expanding this to more than the original three hospitals. We, like everyone else, would like to see this expand to a system made available across the country.

It's gratifying to see that hospitals and healthcare systems are placing such importance on patient satisfaction. After all, it's really all about the patient experience and providing the safest care, best service and high quality healthcare.

A Health Affairs study comparing patient-satisfaction scores with HCAHPS surveys of almost 100,000 nurses showed that a better nurse work environment was associated with higher scores on every patient-satisfaction survey question.