Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Launch your HCAHPS scores with realtime measurement

By Dennis H. Lewis

HCAHPS, however, isn't just a system designed to inform the public about patient opinions in hospitals. In fact the most relevant aspects of the program are financial. The results of the HCAHPS scores are now used by medicare in its value based purchasing program which directly affects the reimbursement payments that hospitals receive from medicare. The results of the HCAPHS survey represent a difference between $300.000 and $2.000.000 dollars a year for each hospital.

As you can see, this is not a trivial matter for hospital management. The truth is that improving HCAHPS scores is a major priority for healthcare organizations.

If your objective is to establish your organization as "Hospital of Choice" in your area, it is essential that you launch a realtime patient satisfaction measurement program. This program will allow you to incorporate patient satisfaction tracking into your daily interactions with patients. This way you will be able to detect problems and implement corrections before they can affect your official HCAHPS scores.

The reason constant realtime measurement is so important is due to the very nature of the HCAHPS survey process. Following a highly protocoled government designed plan, the survey is administered to a small sample of discharged patients several weeks after they leave the hospital. In fact, the target sample size for an entire year is only 300 patients.

Even if you substantially surpass the sample size goal, there's no way to guarantee that a disgruntled patient won't affect your results. In fact, the only real way to assure good results is by working hard to elevate the satisfaction perception of all your patients. To do this effectively, you honestly need realtime data on a day to day basis.

By implementing a realtime patient satisfaction system you are placing an enormously powerful management tool in the hands of your frontline managers. Problem areas can be quickly identified and corrective measures can be made immediately. That way the effectiveness of the corrections can also be verified very quickly.

Until not long ago, an affordable and easy to use realtime satisfaction measurement system was simply a theoretical pipedream. However, thanks to an innovative new technology called Gustometria, hospitals can now track patient satisfaction easily and affordably as part of their daily in hospital routines. By touching the screen of the "gustometer" with their fingers, patients answer a short survey. Usually it takes them about a minute and a half to finish (right in their hospital room), and once they're finished the results are automatically collected and processed by the Gustometria servers.

In the analysis stage, Gustometria really shines. Thanks to the sophisticated business intelligence system built into the Gustometria website, you are able to contrast your custom profile questions with the scores for every one of your valuation questions. This way not only can you extract the maximum value from your collected data, but you can also adapt your surveys on the fly to meet new customer perceptions and needs.

This simple and affordable solution can be up and running in less than a week, and will provide you with valuable information that you couldn't acquire any other way.

Don't hesitate to call Gustometria toll free at 1-877-448-7865.

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