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Solid HCAHPS Scores Only a Start

 |  By jcantlupe@healthleadersmedia.com  
   September 07, 2012

This article appears in the August 2012 issue of HealthLeaders magazine.

Officials at Metro Health Hospital in Wyoming, Mich., have been extremely pleased with the hospital's HCAHPS scores.

"We do very well in HCAHPS, and one of the things is we have a beautiful new hospital," says Cindy Allen-Fedor, RN, MPA, CPHQ, executive vice president for quality. "Just being in a beautiful place doesn't necessarily make a patient happy, but it's a nice place to be," she says of patients' attitudes about the hospital.

The 208-staffed-bed, $150 million medical center with six floors for patient care opened its doors in 2007 with what hospital officials described as "spacious patient rooms, curved corridors, plentiful natural light" as well as expansive outdoor views.

The facility has enough amenities to help the HCAHPS scores, Allen-Fedor says. For instance, patients gave the hospital higher ratings than the national average for being quiet, and the bathrooms were considered much better, too. For the most part, patients liked nurse and physician communication. Overall, 81% of patients gave Metro Health a high rating, compared to the national average for all hospitals of 68%.

But that doesn't mean hospital leadership is free of the pressure to do even better in HCAHPS, Allen-Fedor says.

There are two nearby hospitals, and Metro's new facility won't stay new forever, Allen-Fedor notes.

"You can never rest," she adds. "Everyone around us is getting better and maybe working harder than we are. Still, we are focused all the time. We know patients can go anywhere they want and we appreciate them coming to us, and we tell them that."

"After you leave a flight with an airline like Delta, they say, 'Thank you for choosing Delta.' It's the same thing with healthcare; it's very competitive, and thanking people for choosing Metro is an important part of what we do," Allen-Fedor adds.

The hospital relies on specific teams that oversee specific aspects of patient satisfaction areas covered by HCAHPS. Each team has a champion who coordinates its efforts, Allen-Fedor adds.

Each champion, who may be a nurse, clinical director, or physician, reports to a hospital quality improvement committee and medical executive committee. Those committees, in turn, report to the hospital C-suite. "Different areas of the hospital have dashboards, and they monitor their own unit scores," Allen-Fedor says "They work on any improvements needed."

Metro has worked closely with consultants to tweak nurse and physician interactions with patients to improve HCAHPS scores.

"You tell the patient you are taking care of them, you are knowledgeable, and you are glad they chose Metro," Allen-Fedor says, referring to when nurses, for instance, greet newly arrived patients. "If a patient is waiting, you might say, 'We expect you to be in the room for 15 minutes.'" If you can explain why there will be a delay and how long it will be, it helps.  "You explain procedures so patients understand."


This article appears in the August 2012 issue of HealthLeaders magazine.

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Joe Cantlupe is a senior editor with HealthLeaders Media Online.
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