HCAHPS Scores = hospital pay

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Specializes in ER, Pediatric Transplant, PICU.

Not sure if anybody else's facility has started stressing this (I'm sure mine isn't the only one...) but I wanted to see what nurses thought about this change, basically that the HCAHPS scores will determine how much Medicare will pay the hospital.

" Scoring in the Hospital Value Based Purchasing Program will be based on whether a hospital meets or exceeds the performance standards established with respect to the measures. By adopting this program, we will reward hospitals based on actual quality performance on measures, rather than simply reporting data for those measures."

All the articles I find on this are pretty dense... here's the most basic I can find..

http://www.hhs.gov/news/press/2011pres/04/20110429a.html

How do you think this will effect us?

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Some of these measures will assess whether hospitals:

  • Ensure that patients who may have had a heart attack receive care within 90 minutes;
  • Provide care within a 24-hour window to surgery patients to prevent blood clots;
  • Communicate discharge instructions to heart failure patients; and
  • Ensure hospital facilities are clean and well maintained.

Looks similar to Quality Initiatives I've seen at hospitals I've rotated through. Others I've seen include proper antibiotics given before surgery, EKG/Aspirin w/in x amount of time of arrival with chest pain, beta blocker prescribed for new MI on discharge, etc...

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Specializes in Mental health, substance abuse, geriatrics, PCU.

Call me jaded and paranoid, but I don't trust it. While I agree with high quality care, the definition of "high quality care" is usually different to someone who makes up these rules and someone who is actually giving care. I just get the vibe that SOMEHOW patient satisfaction scores would factor into this and that would be truly wretched in the wrong hands....

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Specializes in Critical Care, ED, Cath lab, CTPAC,Trauma.
Call me jaded and paranoid, but I don't trust it. While I agree with high quality care, the definition of "high quality care" is usually different to someone who makes up these rules and someone who is actually giving care. I just get the vibe that SOMEHOW patient satisfaction scores would factor into this and that would be truly wretched in the wrong hands....

It's great in theory but is this just another way to refuse reimbursement???

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Specializes in Mental health, substance abuse, geriatrics, PCU.
It's great in theory but is this just another way to refuse reimbursement???

Exactly.

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Specializes in Critical care, tele, Medical-Surgical.

I read it as stating increased reimbursement requires that certain criteria are met.

Yes patient satisfaction scores are one item.

http://www.healthcare.gov/news/factsheets/valuebasedpurchasing04292011b.html

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Specializes in medical surgical.

Are patient satisfaction scores gathered from Press Gainey? The questions look the same. I thought PG was a private company. Have they partnered with the government? Just curious :eek:

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Specializes in Emergency & Trauma/Adult ICU.
Are patient satisfaction scores gathered from Press Gainey? The questions look the same. I thought PG was a private company. Have they partnered with the government? Just curious :eek:

No. Remember, this is just Medicare reimbursement, so these scores are from the surveys that CMS (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid - a division of HHS) sends to their patient population.

However ... Press Ganey is contracted with 50% of U.S. hospitals. That's about enough to keep me awake at night.

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Specializes in Critical Care.

HCAHPS is the customer service survey that I'm sure we're all familiar with by now. Regardless of what company is collecting the data, the survey contains the same 27 questions. Many companies are certified to collect HCAHPS data for CMS including Press-Ganey, NRC Picker, Gallup, and Rand. In the near future, a hospital's medicare reimbursement will be tied to these scores which will be collected by these private companies.

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Specializes in Hospice / Ambulatory Clinic.

When I was assigned to work a LA county recently they were emphazing HCAHPS and even made all the registry staff take a customer service class which to us was a bit of a joke since it seemed obvious that the regular staff needed to be there more. But they have reason to be worried since a good portion of the staff would explain things to patients along the lines of "Oh honey this s county" So I figure once payment gets tired to customer service they will be making approximately zero.

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Insanity.

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Specializes in Critical Care, ED, Cath lab, CTPAC,Trauma.
I read it as stating increased reimbursement requires that certain criteria are met.

Yes patient satisfaction scores are one item.

http://www.healthcare.gov/news/factsheets/valuebasedpurchasing04292011b.html

I haven't met a government agency yet that didn't use every excuse in the book to weasel out of paying. This is nothing but a bait and switch ponzi scheme to continue to reimburse as little as possible and shift more responsibility on the average american and legalize excuses on why they can't and won't pay.....

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