Why Hospital Quality & Patient Satisfaction Matter

GOLD BEACH, OR June 22, 2016 - "Quality" is a broad term that can mean many different things. When we eat out at a restaurant, we might define quality as good and timely service, or delicious food offered at a fair price.

In healthcare, your perception of quality might be influenced by the friendliness of the office staff at your doctor visit, how long you waited, or if your ailment was treated and made you feel better.

I'd like to talk with you about "quality" versus "patient satisfaction" in healthcare, and why it's so important for Curry Health Network (CHN) to focus its efforts on these areas.

"Quality" is tied to national practices about clinical performance. These are often referred to as "quality outcomes" and are evaluated by a continual gathering of common hospital data. Simply put, hospitals throughout the country keep track of these standard measurements in order to improve their operations and see how they compare with other hospitals.

These measures include things like mortality rates, outpatient clinic vaccine rates, smoking cessation rates, patient safety, and hospital-acquired infection rates.

It's important for CHN to measure and compare our quality metrics against high performing hospitals of similar size and service. This will ensure we set high clinical quality targets for the medical staff, providers and employees. Think of it like this: If you were running in a race, you wouldn't compare your performance to the runner just ahead of you; you would compare your performance against the runner in first place. This is a similar concept being embraced at CHN. We want to be as good as the best comparable hospital.

"Patient Satisfaction" is another term often linked to hospital quality, but with some key differences. When hospitals and clinics evaluate patient satisfaction that means they are interested in the overall efficiency and experience of your care. This can include how well you liked your medical provider, how effectively they communicated with you, and if you felt you were treated with kindness and compassion.

CMS (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services) is a federal agency responsible for, among other things, paying hospitals for services provided to people with Medicare and Medicaid. This agency, as part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), is changing the way it pays hospitals. Instead of only paying for the number of services provided, Medicare is also paying hospitals for delivering services of higher quality and higher value. Payments will be tied, in part, to quality and patient satisfaction scores.

In healthcare-speak, this is called a "value-based reimbursement model". To you and me, it means the better we are, the more we get paid.

Curry General Hospital is a Critical Access Hospital (CAH), which means our reimbursements are different from larger hospitals because of the number of beds we have available, location, and the population of the communities we serve. Right now, small hospitals like ours are not required to report quality and patient satisfaction data to CMS, though we voluntarily do in some areas.

Under the ACA, its expected hospitals like Curry General will be required to demonstrate high clinical quality and patient satisfaction backed by hard data in order to maximize reimbursements available to us from Medicare. This is why our Board of Directors recently adopted a comprehensive quality improvement plan, in order to focus our efforts in these two areas.

A new medical staff quality committee was recently established to ensure physicians and staff have the appropriate tools and training to meet these new targets. Progress on this work will be available to the public on our website this fall.

We've also enlisted a national research firm called National Research Corporation that specializes in healthcare analytics to manage our in- and out-patient satisfaction surveys. In order for us to establish solid and objective comparisons, these surveys include questions that were created by CMS, and are not customized for CHN.

What can you do to help? If you receive a survey about health care you received at CHN, please fill it out and be honest with us about your experiences. We need as many surveys as possible, whether you were seen in a clinic or the hospital. Your feedback is invaluable and will help us to improve.

I'd also like to invite you to join me in the monthly CHN Community Town Hall meetings. These informal sessions are held at noon in the Bethany Lutheran Church on 5th Street in Gold Beach. This is your opportunity to ask questions about actions taken at the Board of Directors meeting the night before, including those related to operations and finance.

Bring your lunch and bring a friend! I welcome you to join in the discussion about local healthcare issues and decisions that affect us all.