Patient Centered Care

Patient Centered Care
Patient satisfaction is an important indicator for measuring quality in health care and affects clinical outcomes, patient retention, medical malpractice claims, and efficient patient centered delivery of quality health care. While hospitals’ performance on national patient experience surveys gain greater public attention, and are tied to financial rewards, hospitals are making every effort to enhance the patient experience and delivery of patient centered care. The patient centered care model not only benefits patients to become more empowered and receive better care, but also assist hospitals by improving HCAHPS scores which increase hospital ranking; attain better financial performance; improve patient outcomes; respond

Many hospitals are changing business practices to gain patient satisfaction, and are doing this by providing high quality care at competitive rates, such as competitive pricing on lab work, procedures, and outpatient treatments. Nemours Children’s Hospital, for example, lists the Florida Agency for Healthcare Administration’s (AHCA) price transparency on their website, so consumers can view an estimate of costs for all components of care. In addition, patients can decide where to seek treatment based on hospital quality metrics, including readmissions data, mortality rates, complication rates, infection rates, patient experience and other patient safety indicators; which is also available through the Nemours Children’s Hospital website. Many hospitals have discovered other business practices that foster higher satisfaction rates such as proactive rounding by nurses as well as physicians, leaders and

The centers for Medicare and Medicaid services (CMS) initiated value based care, which created an environment in which hospitals, physicians, and other health care providers are provided incentives and payment for delivering high quality health care. This environment has been shaped by programs such as the Hospital Value Based Purchasing Program, Hospital Readmission Reduction Program, and Hospital Acquired Condition Program and encourages hospitals to provide good quality care in order to receive payment for services. For example, the Hospital Acquired Condition Reduction Program states that if a patient acquires an infection from a central line catheter (CLABSI), urine catheter (CAUTI), surgical site (SSI), developed methicillin resistant staphylococcus (MRSA) bacteremia, or developed clostridium difficile (C. Diff) while in the hospital, payment should be reduced and CMS will not reimburse the hospital for treatment of these conditions (Bosko, Dubow and Koenig, 2016). Not only do these programs affect the hospital’s reimbursement, but also affect their market share due to the transparency of results. Therefore, programs such as these will enable hospitals to be more