With Medicare penalizing hospitals with low patient satisfaction scores starting next year, more hospitals are certainly taking note of how happy their patients are in areas other than clinical care.
Effective October 2012, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services will withhold 1 percent of regular reimbursements based on performance. Patient experience makes up for 30 percent of the total bonus payments. With patient survey questions, such as how well did care providers communicate, was pain controlled, and was the hospital room clean, hospitals are increasingly paying close attention to the patient experience.
Even simple strategies such as treating patients with respect and fully explaining what they don't understand can help boost patient satisfaction scores, said Tom Saladino, a member of Connecticut's Institute for Healthcare Communication, at a Radiology Business Management Association conference last month, according to Diagnostic Imaging.
Saladino recommended hospitals train staff to consider patients like customers, greeting them with smiles and making eye contact. And perhaps even more importantly, he suggested that care providers not shy away from taking responsibility for when situations erupt and offering a solution.
Even with strategies to boost patient satisfaction, some areas of the country show poor patient satisfaction rates. Recent Medicare data indicate that the least satisfied patients were at hospitals in New York City, Chicago, and parts of Florida, reports the NPR Shots blog. Theories on why range from older hospital buildings that are cramped and bound to make patients unhappy to teaching hospitals fussing over patients to simply the personality of those regions.
"There's a different cultural norm," said Press Ganey Vice President Deirdre Mylod in the article.
For more information:
- read the Diagnostic Imaging article
- read the NPR Shots blog post
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