Improving Patient Care Experience Advisory Team

Promote an open door policy where the workers know they can come to me with whatever problem or issue they may have. Have regular feedback meetings and this would lead in to discussions on where they are going or would like to go.

In some areas of population health, technology in enhanced patient information is utilized to perform risk stratification to identify the high risk patients. These patient’s often have uncontrolled BP, diabetes with an HgbA1c over 9, COPD, etc. Once identified as high risk or potential high risk, these patients receive additional care or patient outreach to help manage their condition. Some organizations employee RN Health Coaches and Care Coordination teams to help these patients and identify gaps in care. The primary care physician assumes care of the patient along with striving for the patient to become active in their overall health thereby keeping them out of the hospital (Sanford, 2013). One enhanced area of population management is the PCMH model. PCMH practices increase patient’s engagement in shared decision making while providing compensation for care coordination, care management and medical consultation outside of traditional face-to-face visits (Berryman, Palmer, Kohl &Parham, 2013). A patient centered approach pushes for changes not only in the delivery of medicine but in traditional encounters. In addition, PCMH encourages increased access to the patient’s primary care physicians and improved patient satisfaction scores. PCMH and population health encourages providers to increase after hours care to decrease emergency department visits and/or hospitalizations. Thereby reducing cost and improving the patient’s

HCAHPS survey is a patient satisfaction survey required by CMS (The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service for all hospitals in the United States. HCAHPS identified the attributes of affective support, health information, and quick response as the elements of nursing care in the interaction and relationship between patient and nurse that determine patient satisfaction. High score of these elements would increase the hospital competition.

Hospitals implement HCAHPS with the support of the Hospital Quality Alliance (HQA), a public or private partnership that includes key hospital and medical associations, consumer groups, measurement and accrediting bodies and government agencies that have the same interest in improving the quality of hospitals. The Hospital Quality Alliance (HQA) program that is overseen by and public and private entities, that include the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) as well as the Joint Commission, is dominating this effort in the hospital district, generating reports quarterly on the delivery of effective services for mutual conditions. Even though the Hospital Quality Alliance has made this data more available to the public, there has not been enough information on the quality of hospital care from a patients ' point of view. As the Institute of Medicine shows, the foundation of patient centered care is a key factor to having a premium health care system. The HQA backs HCAHPS.

Many entities outside of nursing are making initiatives to measure the quality and safety of the patient experience such as the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). The CMS Partnership for Patients Program (PPP) is a group of over 8000 hospitals, representative of health care organizations, state governments, employers, and unions. Partnership for patients is focused on providing safer, more reliable and less costly hospital care. Other organizations such as not- for-profit groups focus on improving relationship between patients, families and health care professionals. The goal of enhancing this relationship is to ensure the provision of high quality care, delivery of safe care, reduction of the cost of care, and enhancement in the transition of care from provider to the next level of care. Even though nurses strive to provide safe and high quality care, they often lost their hope in patient satisfaction scores, performance improvement and quality measurement. Nurse are willing to provide the best care to their patients and committed to the process of improvement, if their efforts are resulted in better patient outcomes. According to the 2014, issue of the New England journal of medicine, a CMS report of 2013 confirmed that the partnership for patients at an estimated cost of $1 billion, showed early elective deliveries in the CMS hospital engagement networks were down by 48% and nationally, readmissions were

Meeting with staff, providing the opportunity to discuss concerns, ascertain motivation and build relationships between management and workers. Collect and analyse performance figures and observe trends, (for example absence levels, retention, production or customer service). Use staff satisfaction surveys to determine the mood of employees. Promptly analyse responses to identify areas requiring action.

Patient satisfaction may be defined in any number of ways and these scores are often publicly reported as a way to help patients choose among health care providers. The scores are measured by the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems survey (HCAHPS). HCAHPS is the first national, standardized publicly reported survey of patients’ perspectives on hospital care (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, 2014). A report by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (2014), states that until HCAHPS, there was no national standard for collecting and publicly reporting about patient experience of care that allowed valid comparisons to be made across hospitals, locally,

First, as I mentioned in my previous journal, Linda adopted the DMAIC approach (define, measure, analyze, improve, control) to identify if there is an internal holdup for low patients volume in the center, how the patient's workflow currently is measured, what are the improvements that can be developed internally to eliminate or reduce the cause of low patients volume, and how the center sustain the improved performance. The reality is that there are varieties of an internal and external variable that impact the patients volumes

When reviewing the HCAHPS survey results it is important to look at the demographic of the community the organizations service area. The HCAHPS survey is distributed to a random sample of adult patients discharged from the hospital. The survey has twenty-seven questions, categorized by ten domains. The domains address communication, pain control, cleanliness of the rooms, an overall hospital rating, and if patients would recommend the hospital. Even though it is well established that patient-centered organizational change has the most influence on HCAHPS scores, there is evidence that ethnicity and lower socioeconomic standing lowers HCAHPS scores and the patient’s perception of care (Elliott et al., 2015).

Health care administration is a very important and crucial role in today’s healthcare system. With an ever-changing national health care system, the role of a Health care Administrator or Healthcare Executive more than ever is needed. Healthcare facilities, organizations, and or offices rely on health care administrators to plan, direct and coordinate all medical health services (United States Department of Labor , 2014). Some areas where one might find administrators are managing entire medical facilities, specialized clinical departments, or a medical practice for a group of physicians (United States Department of Labor , 2014). The need for high-quality health care administers is more now than ever with the fast-changing health care laws.

The validity and effectiveness of the patient advocacy program can be measured using key performance indicators or KPIs. KPIs are defined as a “set of quantifiable measures that a company or industry uses to gauge or compare performance in terms of meeting their strategic and operational goals” (Investopedia, 2015). The KPIs chosen for JPS should reflect its goals. As shown in the Fishbone diagram, healthcare providers are tasked with multiple moving parts such as patient care, facility management (environment) and emergency room conditions. Therefore, the three KPIs that will support this process change and continuously measured to success are time to healthcare, lab turnaround time, and ER waiting times.

Defining, identifying, and managing high-risk patient populations can be a very difficult task for healthcare organizations (HCOs). Should HCOs look at age, length of problem list, number of medications, number or specialist or subspecialist a patient sees, or number of recent hospital admission (Pelzman, 2014)? Whatever method HCOs decide to use,

Dr. David Torchiana (Cardiac Surgeon) and Dr. Richard Bohmer (Quality Improvement Administrator) want to improve the process in the hospital by

Michael’s work depends on the nurses to make a difference in patient quality care, and patient satisfaction by holding true to the hospital’s mission statement. Providing patients and their families with an exceptional care, respect, confidentiality, and acknowledging the dignity and individuality of every patients, staff members, and communicating openly and effectively with patients and staff are some of the values that guide the organization in pursuit of its mission. The patience experience model at Lenox Hill Hospital places the patient first, and at the center of every decision-making. Patient experience is more than patient satisfaction. A few articles provide a definition of patient experience and also cautioned against equating it with satisfaction. Shale believes that patient experience is a clinical quality indicator; however cautioned paralleling patient experience with satisfaction. She explains, "there is a complex relationship between patient knowledge, patient expectations of care, patient experiences of care, patient assessment of care, and objective measures of patient benefit"(p287). She postulates there are three dimensions or domains of patient experience including the physiologic illness experience (rash, bleeding, etc.), customer service (not satisfaction) and the lived experience of the illness (coping/dealing with the condition) (Wolf et al. 2014). Patient experience is aligned with the patient centered care model.

Improving employee engagement and clinical outcomes, measurement is just the beginning. Having a plan and making the Q12 elements the centre of regular team discussions will lead to improved engagement, better performance, and higher quality care. Managers must emphasize the big picture of engagement, actively listen to team members, and encourage employee involvement in the process. By weaving engagement into their management style, healthcare leaders can build and sustain engagement -- and improve the healthcare worker and patient experience. (Chris Groscurth, 2014). [6]