Patient Satisfaction

HCAHPS, which stands for Hospital Consumer Assessment of Health Providers and Systems, is a new, government-required survey for measuring the patient experience. Since everyone must use the same survey and data collection methodology, HCAHPS allows for "apples-to-apples" comparisons of hospitals.

Patient satisfaction is improving, but some service areas lag behind our goals. We are working to improve
those areas based on the feedback from our patients.

Specifically we are focused on:

• Getting help as soon as you need it/timely response to call bells
• Making sure the environment is clean and comfortable
• Making sure that it is quiet at night
• Assuring that your personal needs are met.

The following explains how the patient satisfaction data is collected.

How many patients were surveyed for each hospital and how were they selected?

The Federal Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services requires hospitals to collect at least 300 surveys to make sure there is a big enough sample for public reporting of hospital-wide results. Maimonides collects about 5,500 each year, so we have enough responses to analyze results at the unit level within the hospital. In general, the more patients that respond to a hospital's survey, the more the results will reflect the experiences of all hospital patients. Patients are randomly selected to participate in the HCAHPS survey. Hospitals are not allowed to choose which patients are selected.

Which hospitals participate in the HCAHPS survey?

All short-term, acute care, non-specialty hospitals are invited to participate in the HCAHPS survey. Most hospitals choose to participate. Hospitals that treat only certain types of patients or medical problems, called specialty hospitals, are not included in the HCAHPS survey. Examples include psychiatric hospitals and children's hospitals. Children's hospitals are not included because the HCAHPS survey asks about adult care only.

How is HCAHPS survey data collected?

HCAHPS survey data must be collected by organizations that are trained by the Federal government in HCAHPS survey data collection procedures. Hospitals can choose to conduct the survey in one of four ways: by mail, by telephone (Maimonides uses a phone survey), by mail and telephone, or by interactive voice recognition (IVR). Regardless of how the survey is conducted, all patients answer the same questions. Patients complete the HCAHPS survey after they leave the hospital.

How is the HCAHPS survey data prepared and reported?

Data analysis is done by CMS, not by the hospitals. CMS uses an independent contractor to analyze the HCAHPS survey data and prepare it for reporting. Data analysis is designed to help ensure fair comparisons among hospitals. Preparing the data for public reporting includes taking certain factors into account in ways that help ensure fair comparisons among hospitals. For example, the mix of patients can differ from one hospital to the next, and these differences in the patient mix can affect a hospital's results. Data preparation takes these differences into account so that the survey results reported have a similar mix of patients.