Improving the Quality of Hospital Healthcare - HCAHPS Survey

LeishTon Consulting and BoardGov Limited

Improving the Quality of Hospital Healthcare - HCAHPS Survey

About this project

Dataset contains National & state-level results from 2013 to 2022 for the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey, including hospital-level completions and response rates. HCAHPS scores are a way of measuring patient’s perspectives of their hospital care. The survey results are used to enable objective comparisons of hospitals across a variety of metrics, inform healthcare consumers about the relative standard of care at each facility and create incentives for hospitals and healthcare organizations to compete on patient engagement and satisfaction.

Source: https://maven-datasets.s3.amazonaws.com/HCAHPS+Patient+Survey/HCAHPS+Patient+Survey.zip

TASK:

Evaluate whether the HCAHPS survey has been successful in creating incentives for hospitals to improve their quality of care by answering the following questions:

Q1: Have hospitals’ HCAHPS scores improved over the past 9 years?

Q2: Are there any specific areas where hospitals have made more progress than others?

Q3: Are there any major areas of opportunity remaining?

Q4: What recommendations can you make to hospitals to help them further improve the patient experience?

APPROACH:

KPI | Satisfaction rate

For this analysis, Satisfaction rate was used in measuring the success of HCAHPS survey. Satisfaction rate is a metric that indicates how satisfied patients are with hospital services. Higher quality of hospital health care is what results in increase in satisfaction rate. The lower the quality of health care, the lower the satisfaction rate.

Formula: Satisfaction rate is the Top-box Percentage. This is the percentage of respondents at the state level who gave a top-box response (answer(s) to the question considered most positive by HCAHPS report) to the measure in the given report.

Q1: Have hospitals’ HCAHPS scores improved over the past 9 years?

Defining Improvement: Satisfaction rate in 2014 was 70.8%. HCAHPS scores can be said to have improved over the past 9 years if satisfaction rate by 2022 is higher/greater than satisfaction rate in 2014. Where 2014 satisfaction rate is greater than or equal to that of 2022, then no improvement in hospital HCAHPS scores.

Outcome of analysis: Satisfaction rate in 2022 was 69.4%. Compared to 2014 satisfaction rate, it declined by -1.4%. Hence HCAHPS scores have not improved over the past 9 years since Satisfaction rate did not increase.

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Q2: Are there any specific areas where hospitals have made more progress than others?

Defining progress: Total change in satisfaction rate from 2014 to 2022 end year was used here. Hospitals are said to have made progress in areas where total change in satisfaction rates between the given periods resulted in a positive value. Also, hospitals are said to have retrogressed in areas where total change in satisfaction rates between the given periods resulted in a negative value.

Outcome of analysis: Total change for all measures between 2014 to 2022 was negative. Hence, hospitals made no progress but experienced retrogression in all areas. However, areas of strength which are areas with little retrogression but high satisfaction rates are Discharge of information and Communication with Nurses.

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Q3: Are there any MAJOR areas of opportunity remaining?

As seen from above, hospitals are losing their effectiveness and desirability faster in areas namely Communication about Medicines (-3.4%) and Responsiveness of Hospital staff (-2.6%) which could worsen overtime if not corrected. This also indicate the possibility of some underlying problems affecting their performance. Hence these are the two major areas requiring more attention for improvement.

There are four measures where hospitals have satisfaction rates less than the average satisfaction rate: (1) Care transition (2) Quietness of Hospital environment (3) Communication about Medicines (4) Responsiveness of Hospital staff. Care transition and Quietness of Hospital environment are not major areas of concern at the moment because they are more stable and consistent than others.

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Q4: What recommendations can you make to hospitals to help them further improve the patient experience?

RECOMMENDATIONS ON COMMUNICATION ABOUT MEDICINE (based on complains about what medicine is for and its side effects)

Hospitals should implement a system that allows patients to communicate with their health care providers through messages or video calls if they have concerns or queries about their medication or condition
Hospitals should implement a policy that requires paper format patient medication information (PMI) to be provided with drug descriptions distributed and dispersed for outpatient.
Hospital staff should use simple and clear language that is easy to understand and avoid using medical jargon or technical terms when describing drugs and its effects.

RECOMMENDATIONS ON RESPONSIVENESS OF HOSPITAL STAFF (based on complains about staffs not responding to help on time and bathroom or bedpan complains)

Hospitals should implement a system that tracks the response and resolution times of each call button request and provides feedback to the staff and the management. This will help monitor the performance of staffs and identify the cause of delays.
Hospitals should provide adequate staffing and resources to meet the demand for toileting assistance especially during peak times or shifts.
Hospitals should provide dignity in care for patients who need toileting assistance by respecting their privacy, autonomy, communication and empathy.

In conclusion, Has HCAHPS survey been successful in helping hospitals to improve their quality of health care over the given 9 years period? No. HCAHPS has been unsuccessful in helping hospitals to improve their quality of health care

REFERENCE