H&HN Daily

Envisioning a Future of Excellence

05.22.14 by Craig Luzinski, R.N.

It's better to undertake a long-term cultural transformation toward high-quality care than to go for quick fixes to raise HCAHPS scores.

Discussions I've had recently with health care leaders seeking advice on raising HCAHP scores have caused me to reflect. Are we looking too closely at short-term goals, such as improving these scores? Might our time and energy be better spent on intentionally creating high-performing cultures — cultures in which all patient satisfaction measures improve simply as a byproduct of seeking excellence?
During the past couple of months, I have noticed an increase in the number of senior executives, managers and directors of patient experience who want solutions to what are considered to be unacceptable patient experience scores. Their urgency is the result of the general public's response to recently released value-based purchasing scores. Leaders are becoming keenly aware that poor patient experiences are having a negative effect on VBP scores.
Poor VBP scores directly affect an organization's Medicare reimbursement, as well as its reputation for providing high-quality care in a compassionate environment. Could this urgency for a solution have been avoided by incorporating the use of strategic foresight — also referred to as "back casting" — in organizational strategic planning activities?

There's No Quick Fix

Since 2002, health care leaders and their boards of directors and trustees have focused on improving patient experience scores in anticipation of its impact on Medicare reimbursement. The three-year-old Affordable Care Act is a further catalyst for the much-needed industry upheaval; failure to achieve certain HCAHPS scores, and uncertainty of the provisions yet to be defined and enacted by the ACA, have caused more angst within the industry. For most organizations, there is no quick, tactic-based approach that will produce sustained improvement. Those with poor patient experience scores likely will suffer a reimbursement reduction for a number of years......


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