Are Patients Satisfied?

The Hospitalist. 2008 June;2008(06):

June 1, 2008 | The Hospitalist

CMS began reporting HCAHPS data in March on responses of patients discharged between October 2006 and June 2007. Results will be published quarterly and will comprise the most recent four quarters of data.

Policy Points

Pa. Offers Version of Hospital Compare

Pennsylvania has its own Hospital Compare-type site that shows how the state’s hospitals stack up against each other. At www.phcqa.org, the Pennsylvania Health Care Quality Alliance (a consortium of Pennsylvania hospitals, hospital associations, insurers, and the Pennsylvania Medical Society) has posted quality reports that compare performance and outcomes of all 162 primary acute care hospitals in the state. Visitors can find hospitals with the best (and worst) track records for treating heart attacks, heart failure, pneumonia, or preventing certain hospital-acquired infections during a certain year.

SHM-backed Stroke Bill Advances

An SHM-supported bill that would develop statewide systems for stroke care has been passed by the House of Representatives, approved by the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, and been submitted for Senate consideration. The “Stroke Treatment and Ongoing Prevention Act of 2007” would authorize a nationwide system dedicated to the prevention, early intervention and treatment of stroke. Under the bill, training and best practice guidelines would be made available for health professionals. The bill would also authorize the Secretary of Health and Human Services, through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to enhance the development and collection of data related to the care of acute stroke patients.

Greater IPPS Payments in ’09?

CMS has released a proposed rule that would boost by 4.1% overall Medicare payments under the inpatient prospective payment system (IPPS) to hospitals in fiscal 2009. Comments on the proposed rule will be accepted through June 13, and CMS will respond to comments on a final rule to be issued on or before Aug. 1. A fact sheet on the rule is available online at www.cms.hhs.gov/apps/ media/fact_sheets.asp.—JJ

To the Rescue

Dr. Williams

How will this new aspect of transparency affect hospitalists?

“Hospitals are now going to be publicly exposed, as it were, and there will be increasing pressure on how to optimize these measures,” says Dr. Williams.

For this, they are likely to turn to their hospitalists. “Especially since hospitals spend so much money on supporting their hospital medicine programs, they’re going to want to see some return on that money in the form of improvement in these numbers.”

Although the data were added to Hospital Compare for the education of current and future patients, “I don’t think consumers look at this data at all,” Dr. Williams notes. “However, I think hospitals look at it, and they’ll use it to advertise [when they have impressive ratings on measures]. On these questions, hospitals are going to begin competing with each other.”

Hospitalists should be able to help their hospitals improve on specific ratings, just as they help with current quality and outcome measures.

“A lot of hospital medicine programs have already used patient satisfaction as a metric, with their own surveys,” Dr. Williams points out.

One patient satisfaction measure in particular can be addressed by hospitalists. “For HCAHPS, discharge is the component [with the lowest scores],” says Dr. Williams. “Obviously hospitalists can have a big impact on improving those numbers.”

Your own path to improving patient satisfaction is clear: Start by checking your hospital’s numbers on Hospital Compare—and remember those numbers can change quarterly. Consider how to boost satisfaction rates for some of those measures and get the buy-in you need to make changes that will bring the percentages up and keep them up. TH

Jane Jerrard is a medical writer based in Chicago.