Over the past five years, the percentage of patients giving their hospital top-box scores for overall rating has increased steadily. From 2015 to 2016, providers, in aggregate, improved on nearly every HCAHPS measure.
Despite the battle raging in Congress over the future of the Affordable Care Act and other dramatic changes occurring in the healthcare sector, the quality of care delivered continues to improve across the board, according to new analyses from Press Ganey.
The healthcare analytics and consulting firm analyzed performance trends from 2013 to 2017 for the HCAHPS (Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems) Overall Rating global measure, and year-over-year performance on individual HCAHPS and Press Ganey survey items from 2015 to 2016.
They identified the top drivers of improvement, and looked at how hospitals in the Press Ganey database performed on these drivers from one year to the next and the impact that performance had on their likelihood to achieve top-box scores on the overall rating.
The analyses found that:
- Over the past five years, the percentage of patients giving their hospital top-box scores for Overall Rating has increased steadily.
- From 2015 to 2016, providers, in aggregate, improved on nearly every HCAHPS measure, with some providers showing greater improvement than others on certain measures.
- During this period, most health systems stayed in the same quartile of performance for overall rating from one year to the next, and 15% moved up to a higher quartile.
- The top drivers of performance on the overall rating measure included patients’ perception of nurse courtesy (quantitative and qualitative measures) and teamwork.
- Of the health systems that showed improved performance on all three top drivers from 2015 to 2016, 86% also increased their overall rating top-box scores.
John Commins is a content specialist and online news editor for HealthLeaders, a Simplify Compliance brand.