Patient Experience Reports from CAHPS (Measures Used in Star Ratings **)

Care of patients (composite of questions 9, 16, 19, 24) **

Communication between providers and patients (composite of questions 2, 15, 17, 18, 22, 23) **

Specific care issues (composite of questions 3, 4, 5, 10, 12, 13, 14) **

Overall rating of care provided by the home health agency (question 20) **

Goal

Barriers

Interventions

Goal: Use continuous quality improvement to provide excellent customer service

• Lack of consistent staffing
• Some staff needing more customer service training

• Strengthen customer service program to manage areas that most commonly have adverse impact on patient experience: scheduling, schedule changes, phone response, complaint response, changes in staffing
• Designate an agency lead for customer service issues
• Provide customer service  training  at staff meetings, and on-going
• Add customer service to orientation of all staff to stress importance.
• Survey patients on their experience with care during the episode to proactively identify issues
• Make a routine call to every patient 1-2 weeks after admission to assess experience and make corrections
• Make an outbound call to the patient when any issue develops or any complaint identified by staff or patient
• Adopt routine follow up phone call to patients who reported a concern to ensure that concern is resolved
• Implement continuous customer service improvement on phone coverage/schedulers

Goal: Provide patient-centered home care that addresses patient identified goals

• Higher demands and expectations of some patients/families
• Cognitive barriers

• Establish agency-wide ‘always events’ related to identifying the patient’s goals and responding to them each visit
• Ask about patient patient-specific goals in each of the measure areas covered in Star Ratings; leave documentation of the goals in the home so that patients will remember the HHA intervention
• Provide dynamic staff education on problem solving difficult patients: scripting, role playing
• Have clinicians preview survey with patients and caregivers using a laminated survey
• Using teach back to provide evidence of patient/caregiver understanding of plan of care, visit schedules

Best Practice Tip to Enhance Home Care Customer Experience / Satisfaction Measures

• Staff education and training about patient experience, reports and influencers of satisfaction
• Telephone calls to each new patient 24 hours before start of care
• Telephone check in with patient within the first 2 weeks of care, to ensure satisfaction with quality of care
• Agency-specific calendar that case manager writes the visit schedule for each discipline and posts it on the refrigerator
• Telephone call before visiting
• Weekly/monthly measurement reports: team/clinician measures reviewed with supervisors “critical for improvement”
• Spotlight positive stories
• Recognize the very low margin for error in home care

From the Visiting Nurse Associations of New England (VNANE) - strategy based on Press Ganey’s “The Banner Story: Improving Home Care Patient Satisfaction to Stay Ahead in a Competitive Market”