A patient has a heart attack and is taken to the hospital. From the moment he or she is admitted until he's discharged, there are dozens of ways to make the hospital experience safer, more efficient, more effective, and more comfortable. And soon, hospitals will be on the hook financially for the experience they provide.
As you know, the patient experience has become a top priority for hospitals, particularly as the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems scores become directly tied to 30 percent of Medicare's value-based purchasing payments in October 2012.
Beyond that, hospitals are inherently dedicated to optimizing the patient experience in any and every way possible, both from a financial perspective and a humanitarian one.
So what, exactly, can be done to improve the patient experience which should also improve the HCAHPS scores? Here are a few ideas.
1. Conduct quality meetings. Have weekly meetings including everyone invested in the patient experience to share insights and suggestions.
2. Publicly report quality metrics. Identify the core indicators of patient care quality, regularly measure them, and post them online. This can help involve multi-disciplinary cooperation.
3. Reduce noise. For instance, nurses can send text messages to doctors rather than paging them. Also, ambient noises can be masked by broadcasting white noise over the paging system. In rooms, you can be sure the radio or TV is on, as long as the programming is relaxing.
4. Start a system of customer service training. This should also be multidisciplinary and should include cleanliness, communication and reaction speed.
5. Help keep patients emotionally centered. Keep patients in a positive state of mind with proven therapies such as pet visits, massages, art therapy, or a TV channel of relaxation video with music, just to name a few.
6. Publicly acknowledge good practices. For instance, you could create an award to acknowledge special contributions to high levels of patient satisfaction. Give it a catchy name like "Icare" and give the employee a badge to wear.
What about the funds necessary for these improvements?
Some experts say it's not the amount of money hospitals spend, but rather the way that money is allocated. So be sure that your programs are both effective and efficient.
There's never a better time to start improving the patient experience which will reflect well on both your facility and you, too. Plus, you'll get the personal satisfaction of initiating systems that will help so many people who need it.
After a career in marketing, Mr. Feldman, through his mother's battle with brain cancer in 2004, realized patients are not treated for their mental, emotional and spiritual needs. After researching evidence-based methods of using nature video and music to calm and soothe patients, he combined the best of these methods when creating TranquilityTV as a way to address patient care in a more holistic manner.
Learn, Apply, Share: Kaiser Permanente's 3-Step Strategy for Healthcare Quality Improvement
As you know, the patient experience has become a top priority for hospitals, particularly as the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems scores become directly tied to 30 percent of Medicare's value-based purchasing payments in October 2012.
Beyond that, hospitals are inherently dedicated to optimizing the patient experience in any and every way possible, both from a financial perspective and a humanitarian one.
So what, exactly, can be done to improve the patient experience which should also improve the HCAHPS scores? Here are a few ideas.
1. Conduct quality meetings. Have weekly meetings including everyone invested in the patient experience to share insights and suggestions.
2. Publicly report quality metrics. Identify the core indicators of patient care quality, regularly measure them, and post them online. This can help involve multi-disciplinary cooperation.
3. Reduce noise. For instance, nurses can send text messages to doctors rather than paging them. Also, ambient noises can be masked by broadcasting white noise over the paging system. In rooms, you can be sure the radio or TV is on, as long as the programming is relaxing.
4. Start a system of customer service training. This should also be multidisciplinary and should include cleanliness, communication and reaction speed.
5. Help keep patients emotionally centered. Keep patients in a positive state of mind with proven therapies such as pet visits, massages, art therapy, or a TV channel of relaxation video with music, just to name a few.
6. Publicly acknowledge good practices. For instance, you could create an award to acknowledge special contributions to high levels of patient satisfaction. Give it a catchy name like "Icare" and give the employee a badge to wear.
What about the funds necessary for these improvements?
Some experts say it's not the amount of money hospitals spend, but rather the way that money is allocated. So be sure that your programs are both effective and efficient.
There's never a better time to start improving the patient experience which will reflect well on both your facility and you, too. Plus, you'll get the personal satisfaction of initiating systems that will help so many people who need it.
After a career in marketing, Mr. Feldman, through his mother's battle with brain cancer in 2004, realized patients are not treated for their mental, emotional and spiritual needs. After researching evidence-based methods of using nature video and music to calm and soothe patients, he combined the best of these methods when creating TranquilityTV as a way to address patient care in a more holistic manner.