MHA's Executive Briefing

Survey: Patient Satisfaction May Depend on Bedside Manner More Than Medical Skill

Online complaints about physician bedside manner and customer service were nearly four times more common than complaints about physicians' medical skills, according to a survey by Vanguard Communications. Vanguard Communications evaluated 3,617 online reviews of 300 internists and obstetricians/gynecologists in New York City, San Diego, Denver and Austin, Texas, with the worst online reviews on Vitals.com, RateMDs.com and Yelp.com.

Here are some of the key findings.

Improving the Patient Experience with Real-Time Measurement

Anxiety service mapping charts patient anxiety levels by identifying each "touch point," or moment of truth, along the patient encounter. This concept can be valuable now that the Affordable Care Act has linked patient-experience assessments to Medicare reimbursement.

Read more from Hospitals & Health Networks here.

Post-Discharge Follow-Up Isn't Just for Hospitalizations: The Value of Contacting ED Patients

As hospitals are under pressure to reduce potentially avoidable readmissions, many hospitals are learning the importance of consistent follow-up with patients after discharge. However, less attention is paid to the value of following up with patients after emergency department visits.

Monitoring post-discharge ED patients can have significant benefits, including the reduction of potentially avoidable hospitalizations, increased patient satisfaction and reduced risk. In fact, a recent study in Annals of Emergency Medicine found ED patients who were contacted after discharge had an average satisfaction score 8.3 percentage points higher than patients who were not contacted.

Read more from Becker's Hospital Review here.

Five Ways to Boost Patient Satisfaction Scores

Improving patient satisfaction scores requires healthcare organizations to rethink and redesign service offerings to ensure outcomes align with patients’ needs. Healthcare organizations claim that the recent effort to tie patient satisfaction scores to Medicare revenue is complex, and may unfairly penalize healthcare organizations operating in low income or emergency only environments.

Moreover, patients nowadays are more inclined to research internet sources and form a faulty vision of how they should be treated, which often conflicts with the provider’s treatment plan. Pain management is another area where patients often give providers low scores. While healthcare organizations are instructed to follow strict drug administration guidelines to combat chronic addiction to pain medication, patient satisfaction surveys measure how well providers manage their pain, thus creating competing priorities for providers.

Read more here.

4 strategies to boost hospitals’ HCAHPS scores

Under the value-based purchasing program, hospitals could be financially penalized for low HCAHPS scores. From communicating clearly and often, to collecting and acting on data, to educating patients and making a positive patient experience part of the culture, here are four strategies hospitals can use to increase HCAHPS scores.

Read the full article from Becker’s Hospital Review.

Moment of truth for healthcare: Why the customer experience matters

A good or bad customer experience can make or break a bank or hotel. Now it’s a crucial “moment of truth” for healthcare organizations that have to work harder for consumer engagement and loyalty, according to a report released recently by the Health Research Institute of PwC US.

Management of the customer experience in healthcare is an emerging business requirement as health reform and state exchanges open up a retail market for more than 23 million individual shoppers by 2018. The ideal experience increasingly is being defined by nonclinical elements, such as convenience, customer service and staff attitude.

Read the news release from the PwC Health Research Institute.

Art of patient satisfaction meets the science of medicine

The Cleveland Clinic has been cited as one of the institutions at the forefront of the shift back to patients, or “patient-centered care,” as it’s called. The Clinic has been able to point to measurable results from changes it has made, through employee training and changing the culture.

Two years ago, the Clinic ranked dead last in a national measure of patient satisfaction among 15 hospitals with more than 1,200 beds. This year, the Clinic was in first place.

Read the full article from the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

Better Patient Satisfaction – Which Model to Follow?

Patient satisfaction is an important element of medical care. It was always important, but it has taken on a new significance since hospitals and physicians will be graded on their bedside manners.

Read more here.

For consumers, time is money and life when it comes to health care

Once upon a time, patient satisfaction with visits to doctors’ offices used to be a function of bedside (exam room) manner, demeanor and responsiveness of the reception and insurance staff, and the age of magazines in the waiting room. Today, waiting time is a key factor, and social media is raising expectations around response time in health care.

Read more here.

Health Care Leader Action Guide to Effectively Using HCAHPS

This guide describes how HCAHPS data should be used in context with other information about organizational performance. It highlights cultural elements necessary to build a firm foundation for HCAHPS success. Once these foundational elements have been considered, the guide outlines a 5-step approach to using HCAHPS effectively to improve the patient experience, quality and safety.