The link between hourly rounding and patient experience outcomes just got stronger.
New research from the Institute for Innovation has emerged, showing patients who report that nurses and staff rounded hourly during their hospital stay rate their overall care experience higher than those who did not observe rounding.
In the study, which involved 120,164 patients across 108 organizations nationwide, patient-reported hourly rounding was positively correlated with patients' ratings of their care experience overall and their likelihood to recommend the hospital to family and friends, according to a Press Ganey article by Diana Mahoney.
Researchers asked patients, "Did a staff member visit you hourly during your stay?" to determine the link between observation of hourly rounding behaviors and patients' perceptions of the care they received. They found that patients who reported experiencing hourly rounding during their stay reported higher evaluations of care in all areas across both Press Ganey and HCAHPS measures.
According to Ms. Mahoney's article, the study found that:
- Patients who report that nurses and staff rounded hourly during their inpatient stay were 29 percent more likely to rate the hospital as a 9 or 10, and 27 percent more likely to give a "top box" score for likelihood to recommend.
- The mean scores between those who did and did not report hourly rounding exceeded 15 points for two individual survey items — "Response to concerns and complaints made during your stay" (15.5) and "Promptness in responding to the call button" (15.1).
- When patients report hourly rounding, those reports can be tracked as an indicator of actual adoption, allowing organizations to measure how often the behavior is occurring, whether its adoption rate is improving and which units are having success with implementation.
Deirdre Mylod, PhD, senior vice president of research and analytics at Press Ganey and executive director of the Institute for Innovation, says the study is important because it allowed nurses to see the impact rounding can have and gives a data-driven reason for instituting the practice.
"It's no longer anecdotal. It's very clearly tied to one patient saying when this is happening, they perceive their care can be far better. And hospitals specifically can show nurses that their behavior matters, not just for things like likelihood to recommend or overall rating, but patients' perception of pain control, nurses' responsiveness, the critical parts of care that are important to nurses," she says.
She encourages hospitals to use information from the study on patients' observations of hourly rounding to think about the areas they're trying to improve for patients and what they're homing in on.