There have been discussions about this, but nothing official has been decided yet.  However, HealthStream believes that basing payments on individual HCAHPS themes, rather than the Overall Rating, is where CMS may very well go.  It is certainly something that hospitals and healthcare systems should have on their radar, as its implications could be far-reaching.  One possible scenario could be that a hospital with stellar Overall Ratings but low Doctor ratings could get smaller reimbursements from CMS than a hospital with a mediocre Overall Rating but high theme scores.  In this type of reimbursement environment, hospitals would need to strive for high ratings in all of the HCAHPS themes.

Of course, improvement is the name of the game in all of healthcare anyway.  HealthStream Research is introducing a new online tool to develop, communicate, and manage survey-based action plans, the HealthStream Improvement Center.  This tool provides a framework for taking action to address issues revealed through survey insight, establishing accountability for specific actions and monitoring progress toward targeted improvement.  Like all of our products and services, this solution is designed to meet the complex challenges of large health systems.  While competitive products may facilitate plan management for a single facility, our solution offers advanced capabilities necessary for actually managing plan performance throughout a system.  A few key features include:

1. Define Goals, Critical Success Factors and Action Steps at the corporate, hospital, and department levels.  Customers may leverage best practices from HealthStream Research consulting in populating the plans action steps.
2. Select survey scores as Key Performance Indicators (KPI) used to monitor progress toward improvement goals.
3. Enterprise-wide plan management and progress reporting by establishing common goals to adopt by related divisions, hospitals or departments.
4. Assign leaders to Goals, Critical Success Factors, and Action Steps for clear accountability.
5. Plan scoring by participants provides owners with progress tracking.
6. Notifications and alerts for past due items.
7. Single user interface for all survey-based plans (physician, employee, HCAHPS, etc.). 
    

You can read the press release for the HealthStream Improvement Center here.

Do you have a question you’d like to send to our team of experts?  Send an email to researchinfo@healthstream.com, and our interdisciplinary team of experts will provide you with a detailed answer.  Specify if you wish to remain anonymous.