HealthLeaders Media - Recently, HealthLeaders released the results from its annual Patient Experience Leadership Survey, and the findings were fascinating.
The report, titled “Patient Experience: Help Wanted†chronicled the ongoing disconnect between the stated priorities of the nations’ hospital executives and their action plans to meet those priorities. The report included essays by Steve Ronstrom, a prominent health-system CEO, and by Peter Kuhn, CEO of MEDSEEK. Both essays implored hospital executives to take decisive action, take accountability for HCAHPS performance and implement plans to improve the experience not just in the hospital, but across the continuum of care.
The problem, the report continues, is not that executives haven’t received this message. With so many hospital CEOs listing the patient experience as either their top priority or one of their top 5 priorities, the message is getting through. The problem is figuring out how to act on it. Here’s a quick snippet:
“Many respondents- from small hospitals to large academic medical centers- note that they are having trouble improving their [HCAHPS] scores…
“We’ve historically maintained high patient satisfaction scores, both inpatient and outpatient. But the outpatient scores have slipped and we are struggling with the ‘why’,†writes one small hospital CEO…
“Our goal is to be at 90% for all quality measures and we have not reached that goal in patient satisfaction,†writes a nurse leader at a large healthcare organization. “As we get better, so does everyone else. We need to figure out a way to get better faster.â€
Engaging the Patient's Take: As always, the HealthLeaders Media Intelligence Report is a fascinating and invaluable read. Hospital executives believe that the patient experience is important, but they often allow other priorities to take precedence come budget time. Yesterday’s post about the recent Gallup Management Journal (GMJ) speaks to this very issue. According to GMJ, organizations that focus on the patient experience and more specifically, focus on patient engagement, consistently predict “hospital performance on an array of crucial business outcomes, including EBITA per adjusted admission and net revenue per adjusted admission.â€
The original post is found here, and click here for a copy of the report.