HCAHPS is out, so now what?

For many hospitals across America, the public release of patient satisfaction data by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services a couple weeks ago was truly a non event. For others, the media behaved as expected, calling PR offices to find out why one hospital did better than another in the same market. We saw lists published in popular healthcare press comparing the "top 100" hospitals to each other in regards to this new measuring system...most got a "B" grade...relatively few of these "top" hospitals were among the best at satisfying their patients according to this measure. I had client facilities compare their scores to others in their market place, their region, and yes, to these same "top" performers by other measures.



So, as consumers, what can we expect? Better care? A more personalized experience? Wouldn't that be great!! As a consumer, if I want to see this information, I have to go to the Hospitalcompare.com website, find the hospital I am interested in learning about, and then decide if a 70 is a good score. When I was in school (again with the long long time ago), a 70 was minimally acceptable on a 100 point scale...yet with this measure, 70 puts you at or near the upper quartile, and a 76 puts you in the upper decile.



I do believe transparency of information and performance is the best thing that can happen to any industry. If you want improvement, let your staff and physicians know that others will learn about poor performance...it's no longer a secret. In the case of patient satisfaction, hospitals have been keeping track and surveying for decades, thanks to a requirement by the JCAHO to track patient satisfaction. By publicly releasing these scores, perhaps the standard will go from tracking to improving.



Tell me your thoughts...