By Matt Pickens
Driving and sustaining improvement in patient experience is challenging work in an increasingly competitive environment. The bar is constantly being raised on performance. For example, a hospital with a 75% top box score on the HCAHPS Rate Hospital item in 2008 would have ranked better than 89% of its peers. Fast forward to the year 2014 and if that same hospital maintained a 75% top box rating for Rate Hospital, it would only rank higher than 66% of its peers. The message is clear- standing still is falling behind.
We often hear hospital leaders say something to the effect of “we know what to do, but we’re not seeing the impact in our scores that we expect.” The reality is- perhaps the behaviors that are supposedly happening are not happening all that well, if at all. The old adage, “you can’t change what you can’t measure” is very applicable in these scenarios. There are a host of technology solutions that can help to capture, measure and track the desired behaviors to ensure that they are happening consistently. Tablet-based solutions to facilitate leader and nurse hourly rounding are a good example. 