First few Article Sentences
Perception is everything, well not quite, but it is actually 30% of the calculation towards earning back the 1% Medicare takeaway. That is right, beginning this year Medicare is taking away 1% and putting the money in a pot, and hospitals have the opportunity to earn back up to 150% based on Quality Indicators and Patient Satisfaction scores. The bell curve is getting mighty tight. A score of 96% can put a hospital below the 75th percentile.
The HCAHPS (Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems) survey is the first national, standardized, publicly reported survey of patient’s perspective of hospital care. Hospitals have collected information on patient satisfaction for their own internal use for years, but until HCAHPS there was no national standard for collecting and publicly reporting information about the patients’ experience of care that allowed valid comparisons to be made across hospitals locally, regionally and nationally.