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.
To the Rescue
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.