Medicare Value Based Purchasing Program

Medicare Value Based Purchasing Program
And
Patient Experience of Care

As healthcare costs continue rising the Federal Government has decided to change the way Medicare reimburses hospitals from a system of activity to pay for performance in a system called Value-Based Purchasing. This means that hospitals that do well versus specific benchmarks will be rewarded and hospitals that perform poorly will be penalized.  Pay-For- Performance (P4P) and Patient Experience of Care are also terms that will permeate the industry as random surveys of patients are performed about how they view their recent experience in the hospital.  Every hospital will focus on the clinical aspects of the benchmarks used because that’s their primary business. But those hospitals that work to distinguish themselves in the Patient Experience of Care will set themselves apart from their competitors based on the way they educate and “treat” their patients. Think customer service not treatment of care.

There are two areas that Medicare and CMS will benchmark:

• How closely hospitals follow best practices and meet or exceed specific clinical benchmarks

• How well hospitals enhance the patient’s experience of care

• The Patient Experience of Care survey will include feedback from patients on these areas:

• How well nurses communicate with patients

• How well doctors communicate with patients

• How responsive hospital staff is to patients’ needs

• How well caregivers managed patients’ pain

• How well caregivers explain patients’ medications to them

• How clean and quiet was the hospital  

• How well caregivers explained the steps patients and families need to take to care of themselves outside of the hospital (i.e., discharge instructions)

• The survey also asks patients to give an overall satisfaction rating to their hospital stay.

Recent research says that:

•          Patients understand only about 50% of what their doctors discuss with them.

•          60% of patients do not understand the information they are given about an upcoming treatment or procedure.

•          In a related study, patients forgot 80% of what they were told and 50% of the remembered data was recalled incorrectly

•          On top of this 14% of inpatients will be re-admitted within one month and up to 49% within one year.

•          75% of these re-admissions could be prevented through supplemental patient education.

LaSalle General Hospital recognizes the importance of bridging the gap between clinical care and the entire satisfaction of our patients.  LGH recently expanded the role of one of our own, Erin Masters, into the role of Marketing / Patient Advocate.  In addition to efforts to highlight all service lines of LGH to the community and referring providers, Erin will be making regular visits to our patients while they are in the hospital.  She will be the liaison for the patients and provide feedback to the clinical and administrative staff regarding patient concerns during their hospital stay.

Erin has been an employee of LaSalle General Hospital for 2 years, she started out as Dr. Gallaspy’s Office Manager then as our Wellness Center Office Manager.  Erin has learned a lot about our hospital in the last year through assisting with coordinating marketing and public relations.  She is a graduate of University of Louisiana at Monroe with a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration & Marketing.  Please feel free to send any feedback or comments regarding the improvement of patient satisfaction to Erin at emasters@lgh-jena.org.