Patient Satisfaction and Value

Patient Safety initiatives can readily be linked directly to value for the hospital. If a hospital reduces one fall there are savings of litigation, and non-reimbursable care. Patient Satisfaction can be a little more abstract when measuring results – not that you can’t get a score very readily from a Press Ganey Survey. What does that mean for dollars? How can we measure our effectiveness in these initiative? Adding new dimension to this is the HCAPS Surveys and how they will affect reimbursement for care.

Every business uses some sort of performance metrics. Often quantity of incoming requests (similar to incoming patients) and quantity of “credits” given for mistaken work (similar to non-reimbursable care) – not that these are exactly the same in all instances but they are similar and make the point that tracking specific information can be helpful when improving business practices.

Sphere3 believes that a stand-alone metric, while valuable information, is less effective as one that is cross-referenced with another. For example, if a hospital were to look at average response time balanced with the staff to patient ratio and correlated with total average call volume – you could use the information together and create a multi-faceted metric. Then take that metric and see if there is safety improvement and if there is also an improvement in patient satisfaction score.

Most importantly, what is the link it to dollars? Will the hospitals elective surgeries increase? Will the hospital have a consistently higher census? I understand there are some large assumptions when loosely linking these two data points but the point is if you had the power to easily look at information such as (1) your response times, (2) quantity of direct interactions with patients, (3) average wait time before exit, and (4) total call volume, would you be able to make specific linkages to improvement in patient satisfaction? Would you be able to take that information and link it to increase in electives and increase in revenues based on increase of paying heads in beds?

Our new Sphere3 Scorecard™ will make it easier for hospitals to get specific information on clinician response and interaction which can be compared to patient satisfaction.

Call us for a full presentation.