Presented by:
Mike Wardlow, RN, BSN, BSEd
Manager, Customer Service
St. John’s Regional Medical Center

St. John’s Regional Medical Center will share its successful HCAHPS strategies that can help you prepare for the rising impact of public reporting. Mike Wardlow will provide an entertaining look at their blueprint for success, with best practices you can implement right away in your own organization.

In just one hour, participants will learn about St. John’s Regional Medical Center’s successes with:

• Comprehensive patient welcoming strategies;
• Detailed patient-care plans that stress frequent interactions;
• A high-impact, post-discharge “thank you” program;
• Measurement and planning at the individual department level;
• A transparent approach to sharing results throughout the hospital

The webinar will be presented by Mike Wardlow, Manager of Patient Satisfaction/Customer Service for St. John’s Regional Medical Center in Joplin, Missouri. In addition to his strong background in communications, public relations, and marketing strategies, since 2005 he has been responsible for overseeing the monitoring and reporting of the hospital’s patient satisfaction results, developing and implementing a strategic plan to continuously improve patient satisfaction, acted as a liaison between administration, physicians, nurses, and ancillary staff to resolve patient concerns/issues, and served as an educator and facilitator for new employee orientation. This insightful webinar will show you precisely how St. John’s has implemented successful HCAHPS strategies and how your hospital can craft the most effective patient experience.

Date: Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Time: 2:00-3:00 ET
Forum: Online webinar
Cost: $99 per log-in - the number of participants per log-in is unlimited. Clients save $50 and pay only $49! Email us at researchinfo@healthstream.com for the special client invitation code.

Registration Required. Click the link below to register online. Payment is required at the time of registration via credit card. Instructions on accessing the webinar will be provided with your registration confirmation.

Register Online

Mark your calendars! HealthStream Research’s 2008 Summit will be at the Opryland Resort and Convention Center in Nashville, Tennessee, September 2-5, 2008. We encourage those that have implemented innovative programs, made improvements in their scores, or positively impacted business outcomes to consider presenting. If you’ve got something to share that can help others create excellence in healthcare, we want to hear from you.

Give us your ideas for a presentation by responding to our Call for Papers. Each year, we have so many submissions that we are not always able to accept all of them — so we encourage everyone interested to submit as early as possible.

The 2008 HealthStream Research Summit will coincide with the 2008 HealthStream Learning Summit, giving you the combined experience of insights gained through research and action facilitated through learning. The 2008 HealthStream Learning Summit will be a great opportunity to experience the HealthStream Learning Center™ (HLC), where 1.5 million hospital-based healthcare professionals get the knowledge and tools to create safer environments for patients, increase clinical competencies of its workforce, and facilitate the rapid transfer of the latest information and technologies.

Call for Papers

Effects of Patient Perception on Overall Quality Ratings

Does the length of time a patient waits for initial assessment, wait time after initial assessment, and treatment time relate to Emergency Department patient ratings of overall quality? HealthStream Research investigated these questions with a large sample of emergency room patients. The HealthStream Research Patient Insights Survey was administered to 12,502 emergency department patients from across the nation.

Full Article

Part Two

HealthStream Research has provided physician satisfaction survey services to healthcare systems and individual hospitals across the U.S. since 1990 and has accumulated the nation’s largest comparative database (with over 700 facilities and more than 35,000 respondents) for physician satisfaction. We recently took a closer look at four hospitals that scored high when physicians were asked to rate the hospital’s efforts to maintain a high quality of care which is consistent across all shifts and floors.

In the December Random Samples (available at www.healthstreamresearch.com) we featured the best practices of a 520 bed hospital as part one. This month we will look closer at a smaller hospital as part two of a four part series that shares best practices in consistency of care.

Full Article

Q: "I have heard that nurses might be vulnerable to burnout. Is this true? If so, what are the symptoms?"

In general, people in the helping professions have a heightened tendency toward burnout. Nurses, as members of the helping professions, are indeed vulnerable to burnout. Job burnout can be defined as “a feeling of physical, emotional and mental exhaustion that results from a chronic state of cumulative pressure or stress at work” (Lachman & Diamant, 1987, p. 221). As you might imagine, burnout can have negative consequences; burnout is associated with absenteeism and intent to leave one’s job.

Full Answer

Data Submission Deadlines
January 9, 2008 is the data submission deadline for patients discharged in July, August and September 2007. HealthStream Research is currently submitting results to CMS for the July to September 2007 reporting period on behalf of our clients, so our HCAHPS clients can disregard emails from CMS relating to this reporting deadline. HealthStream Research stays on top (and often, well ahead) of all CMS guidelines, regulations, and deadlines so that our clients can remain focused on delivering the finest healthcare.

Public Reporting Begins in March 2008
Preview reports will be made available by CMS through your QNet account in January 2008 for hospitals that collected data for October 2006 through June 2007. This is also the last window of opportunity for hospitals to suppress the March 2008 public reporting of October 2006 through June 2007 results.

Mode Adjustment Results Released By CMS
CMS has released the results of its Mode Adjustment study. In general, patients randomized to the Telephone Only and Active Interactive Voice Response modes provided more positive evaluations than patients randomized to Mail Only and Mixed (Mail with Telephone follow-up) modes. The Mode Experiment was used to develop a model for patient-mix adjustment in order to account for the effect on HCAHPS responses of patient characteristics not under the control of hospitals. Adjustments for the effects of survey mode and patient mix are necessary for valid comparison of scores across hospitals. To view the complete report, go to http://www.hcahpsonline.org/modeadjustment.aspx.


If you have any HCAHPS questions, please contact your project manager or email us at researchinfo@healthstream.com.

HealthLeaders Magazine, December 1, 2007

What does quality in healthcare really mean to consumers? One survey found that good physicians and treatment options constituted quality healthcare for a majority of consumers, but a multitude of other factors, from advanced technology to being treated with respect, were also cited. In any event, one thing is certain: However patients define quality, they are seeking more information about it than ever before. The transparency movement is helping consumers to make more informed decisions and demand quality from every corner of the industry. But as consumers gather information from multiple sources and take a more active role in their care, will increased patient awareness help spark meaningful, lasting change in the industry?

Full Article