What is the HCAHPS survey?Patient Satisfaction Survey

The Hos­pi­tal Con­sumer Assess­ment of Health­care Providers and Sys­tems (HCAHPS, pro­nounced h‑caps) sur­vey is a nation­al, stan­dard­ized, and pub­licly report­ed sur­vey com­plet­ed by a ran­dom sam­ple of adult patients between 48 hours and 6 weeks after dis­charge from a hos­pi­tal.

The HCAHPS sur­vey is issued to dis­charged patients via mail, tele­phone, and email. It con­tains 32 total ques­tions, includ­ing 21 core ques­tions that address crit­i­cal aspects of the hos­pi­tal expe­ri­ence. Those aspects include:

  • Hos­pi­tal envi­ron­ment clean­li­ness
  • Hos­pi­tal envi­ron­ment quiet­ness
  • Respon­sive­ness of hos­pi­tal staff
  • Ease of com­mu­ni­ca­tion with doc­tors and nurs­es
  • Com­mu­ni­ca­tion about pain
  • Dis­charge infor­ma­tion
  • Over­all impres­sion of the hos­pi­tal

Why was the HCAHPS survey created?

Before the cre­ation of the sur­vey, there was no stan­dard­ized way to con­vert patients’ per­cep­tions of their hos­pi­tal stays into mea­sur­able data. HCAHPS has cre­at­ed a nation­al stan­dard of col­lect­ing and report­ing data about the patient expe­ri­ence. This allows objec­tive com­par­isons to be made between hos­pi­tals local­ly, region­al­ly, and nation­al­ly.
The HCAHPS sur­vey was designed for these pur­pos­es:

  • To gen­er­ate data about the patient expe­ri­ence that allows mean­ing­ful com­par­isons between hos­pi­tals for con­sumers.
  • To pub­licly report sur­vey results, hold­ing hos­pi­tals account­able for their qual­i­ty of care and giv­ing them incen­tives and hard objec­tives for improve­ment.

How does the HCAHPS survey affect hospitals?

The results of HCAH­Ps sur­veys are used to deter­mine a hospital’s patient sat­is­fac­tion score. This score is not only pub­licly report­ed and vis­i­ble to con­sumers, but is weight­ed in the deci­sion to award or with­hold 1% of reim­burse­ment by Medicare to hos­pi­tals. Adher­ence to clin­i­cal per­for­mance guide­lines is weight­ed by 70% in the deci­sion to award or with­hold funds, while HCAHPS scores are weight­ed by 30%.

How can hospitals improve their HCAHPS score?

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion between providers, hos­pi­tal staff, and patients is a major com­po­nent of over­all patient sat­is­fac­tion. So is the clean­li­ness of the hos­pi­tal envi­ron­ment. Tools like ES Opti­miz­er, ES Ser­vice Opti­miz­er, and Sur­vey Opti­miz­er are proven to improve envi­ron­men­tal ser­vices per­for­mance, staff com­mu­ni­ca­tion and patient sat­is­fac­tion. Over 950 hos­pi­tals, med­ical cen­ters, nurs­ing homes, and long-term care facil­i­ties rely on Smart Facil­i­ty Soft­ware to man­age envi­ron­men­tal ser­vices oper­a­tions, ser­vice requests and sur­vey data faster, more effi­cient­ly, and more effec­tive­ly.

ES Opti­miz­er can elim­i­nate up to 12 hours per pay peri­od of admin­is­tra­tive time spent cre­at­ing assign­ments, free­ing up time and mon­ey that can be re-pur­posed towards ensur­ing excel­lent cus­tomer ser­vice. Using ES Opti­miz­er is proven to make a dif­fer­ence in the clean­li­ness and effi­cien­cy of your facil­i­ty. Using ES Opti­miz­er can mark the dif­fer­ence between whether or not your facil­i­ty receives full fund­ing.

Read Part Two, HCAHPS and the Envi­ron­men­tal Ser­vices Depart­ment.

Read Part Three, Role of EVS Soft­ware in Rais­ing HCAHPS Scores.

Learn more about HCAHPS.

Get start­ed with Smart Facil­i­ty Soft­ware Today! Click here and com­plete the form to get your free online demo and per­son­al­ized tour of ES Opti­miz­er.