There is no question that patients care about the quality of the food or the comfort of their room. Regardless of the criteria, we always want patients to be satisfied. But how do those factors really impact the quality of care your patients receive?

The reality is that “patient satisfaction” measures come from the hospitality industry and while valid and not unimportant, how do they really impact your patients’ ability to heal? Your caregivers ability to care?

That’s why NRC Picker focuses on “patient experience” measures, measures based on Harvard research about what caregiver behaviors create a quality of care environment. A patient-centered care environment.

Patient experience questions are no longer considered “boutique” or a fad. Patients are active participants in their healthcare and are demanding improved care, and for good reason. More than a quarter of all respondents in the 2006 HCAHPS data collection reported hospital staff never described possible side effects of new medications in a way they could understand. A quarter of respondents reported hospital staff never talked with them about whether they would have the help they needed when they left the hospital. Twenty percent never received written information about symptoms or health problems to look for when leaving the hospital.

“…[P]atient satisfaction surveys continually yield high satisfaction rates that tend to provide little information in the way of comparisons between hospitals … Patient experiences tend to uncover patient concerns about their hospital stay which can be of value to the hospitals as well as consumers.” 
             -- Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, February 2003.

In fact, patient experience measures are gaining worldwide and expert endorsements:

The Institute of Medicine’s “Crossing the Quality Chasm” identifies patient-centered care, defined as the Eight Dimensions of Patient-Centered Care, as one of its six aims for improving the quality of care in America.

HCAHPS survey developed by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality includes many of NRC Picker’s patient-experience survey questions.

NRC Picker’s family of patient-experience surveys have been repeatedly selected for U.S. public reporting efforts, including the first in the nation (Mass.) and the largest such program in the country called Patients’ Evaluation of Performance in California (PEP-C). NRC Picker’s experience-based measures are used in Canada, The United Kingdom, and Australia.