In 2006 a countrywide system for measuring patient satisfaction in hospitals was launched by the U.S Department of Health and Human Services. Called HCAHPS, this initiative uses a standard patient experience survey to measure and benchmark hospitals from all over the country. For the first time in March, 2008 the results of the survey were made available to the general public through the website www.hospitalcompare.hhs.gov. Here you can compare the patient satisfaction scores for any hospital participating in the program.
But the HCAHPS system isn’t just designed to compare and inform about hospitals. The truth of the matter is that medicare has incorporated the HCAHPS results into their value based purchasing system, which directly links hospital’s reimbursement payments to their patient experience scores. For most hospitals in the United States this represents between $300.000 and $2.000.000 a year in revenue received from medicare.
Obviously improving HCAHPs scores is a high priority for hospitals across the country.
That’s why I’d like to share with you today five different strategic initiatives which you can use to improve your HCAHPS scores:
Implement a Daily Measurement System The core of any HCAHPS improvement system should be a realtime daily measurement system. In order to guarantee optimum yearly results you need to be tracking and improving your patient experience on continuous basis. This is the only way to effectively detect and correct problems before they can have a significant impact on your official HCAHPS scores.
Inform and Empower Frontline Managers The importance of patient satisfaction must originate from top level management, but the to be effective it must be put into practice on the front line. Patient satisfaction occurs in the hospital room, the waiting room and where ever you find patients and their families That’s why you must design a system where critical and timely information arrives constantly on the desks of your frontline managers.
Focus on the biggest problems Your realtime measurement system must be able to rapidly and easily identify the patient profiles with the lowest scores. These groups should mark your priorities for allocating resources and training. Often these will be associated with specific departments or services within the hospital, but sometimes they also are linked to individual demographic groups. Whatever the case, you must initiate concrete steps toward fixing these problems in patient perceptions.
Track and improve physician satisfaction Physicians are always at the heart of anything that happens in a hospital. There attitudes are rapidly transmitted inside the organization and directly to the patients. That’s why you must develop an effective system for measuring and improving physician satisfaction. Studies have proven that a 1% increase in staff morale will cause a 2% increase in patient satisfaction scores. Don’t waste this leverage.
Reduce Nurse turnover rate The quality of nursing care is of critical importance in the HCAHPS survey. However, due to the growing shortage of qualified nurses, retention rates are falling in many hospitals. Undoubtedly this represents a substantial risk for patient satisfaction. By implementing a comprehensive program designed to track and improve job satisfaction with your nurses, you can achieve important benefits in your HCAHPS scores.
In order to make these five essential tactics easy to implement, I would like to recommend a truly innovative new tool called Gustometria. Patients answer short surveys by touching the screens of the “gustometer” right from their hospital room. The whole process takes about a minute and the results are available immediately for analysis.
More importantly Gustometria incorporates a very sophisticated business intelligence system which will allow you to extract the maximum value from your survey data. You will be able to contrast your custom profile questions with the results of each valuation question. Gustometria also allows you to adapt your surveys on the fly an to structure your surveys in a way which assures high participation rates.
This simple and affordable solution can be up and running in less than a week, and will provide you with valuable information that you couldn’t acquire any other way.
Don’t hesitate to call Gustometria toll free at 1-877-448-7865.
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