New - Improve Your HCAHPS Scores

HCAHPS Preparation and Improvement Library

HealthStream’s HCAHPS Preparation and Improvement Library prepares your staff by educating them on the actual survey questions and focusing them on simple things that improve patients’ perceptions of their care. This course is designed for all hospital staff whose interactions with patients are measured on the HCAHPS survey. Learners will interact with typical patient scenarios to identify their behaviors that both positively and negatively impact patient care. This library is essential for communicating the importance of the HCAHPS survey to all hospital staff and physicians, building integrated and fully aligned patient care teams, and constructing organizational readiness for future CMS developments.

With the HCAHPS Preparation and Improvement Library, you’ll be able to:

Increase Patient Satisfaction
• Learn which behaviors matter most to patients
• Understand the non-clinical components of quality care
• Implement a patient-centered approach to care

Improve Key Business Outcomes
• Increase patient loyalty by providing an exceptional hospital experience
• Stand out from other hospitals for your commitment to patient-centered care
• Receive the full annual payment update from CMS
• Be prepared for future CMS developments that could affect business outcomes

For more information about HealthStream’s HCAHPS Preparation and Improvement Library or to see a demo of the course, click on the link below.

Click Here

HealthStream Research Prepares for Launch of Insights Online

HealthStream Research is preparing to launch Insights Online, our new online reporting website. The graphical interface of our online reporting tools (Results! and StatData) has been redesigned with a fresh new appearance, giving the new Insights Online reporting website improved visual clarity to your results and reports.

As most of the changes are cosmetic, there will be nothing that users will have to learn to use the new website. The new Insights Online reporting website primarily represents a visual—not a functional—redesign. You’ll use the same user ID and password as you have in the past, and you’ll have the same ability to access results and generate reports.

Beginning on March 11, 2008, the Insights Online reporting tool will be available through our website at: www.healthstreamresearch.com/clientaccess. We encourage you to bookmark this new link.

If you have any questions about the transition to Insights Online, please contact your Project Manager.

Knowledge Network Webinar: Accountability for HCAHPS: 10 Steps to Ensure Forward Momentum

Presented by:
Brian Lee, CSP
CEO, Custom Learning Systems Group

In this age of public access to hospitals’ HCAHPS results, the ability to positively affect scores (and keeping the momentum of success moving forward) is critical. Yet, accountability for delivering patient satisfaction, and ownership of the outcomes, often slips through the cracks. Because there is a direct link between accountability and patient satisfaction, it is important to improve accountability, control, and communication systems. Join Brian Lee, CEO of Custom Learning Systems Group for a lively exploration of the link between accountability and HCAHPS success. You'll discover the 10 steps to moving your hospital toward a culture of accountability, responsibility, and genuine ownership of HCAHPS outcomes.

Brian Lee is one of North America’s leading experts in the field of World-Class Healthcare Patient Satisfaction and Employee Retention and is the author of 6 books. Brian Lee and the Custom Learning System's team of training and implementation professionals have led hundreds of hospitals and healthcare organizations on the journey to excellence. His leading-edge expertise, personal passion, platform enthusiasm, and infectious humor have provided inspiration to more than 1.5 million people world-wide. Brian's commitment, drive, and dedication to patients, employees, and physicians have resulted in his recognition as "Healthcare's Mr. Loyalty."

Date: Wednesday, March 26, 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

HCAHPS Discovery: Physicians and Nurses—Listening to Patients

HealthStream Research continues to examine the expanding Patient Insights–Inpatient Satisfaction Research database for emerging HCAHPS trends. It has already been established that nurses’ listening performance is the item with the highest-correlation to the overall rating on the HCAHPS survey. Upon deeper examination, HealthStream Research’s analysts saw that the rank order of the top items for physicians was identical to the rank order of the top items for nurses. This research paper will show that patients have similar expectations of consistency across the entire patient care team and that listening skills are of the highest importance.

Full Article

2008 HealthStream Research Summit: Call for Papers

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 1.6 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

Spreading Best Practices: Physician's Perceptions of Consistency of Care

Part Four

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 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. This is the final interview of a four part series that features best practices of hospitals that score high in this area. If you have not had the opportunity to read parts 1, 2, and 3 of this series, you can find them here (www.healthstreamresearch.com, Knowledge Network, Best Practices).

Full Article

HCAHPS Spotlight

This month's HCAHPS Spotlight contains important upcoming dates, as well as Chartbook participation information. Click on the following link for the HCAHPS update.

HCAHPS Update

Ask the Experts

Question:
How was your employee survey developed and tested?

Answer:
Survey Development: HealthStream Research’s Employee Insights Satisfaction and Engagement Survey was developed from (1) a composite of public domain employee instruments, and (2) questions recommended by the JCAHO. The survey instrument was designed and developed to monitor hospital quality trends, and identify areas of strength, as well as areas of immediate priority, based on the perceptions of employees of the hospital.

Survey Pretest: After the development of the HealthStream Research Employee Insights survey, a pilot test was performed. At the conclusion of the pilot study, a formal analysis that examines the psychometric properties of the instrument was performed. Reliability is assessed through the use of coefficient alpha. Discriminant and convergent validity are routinely assessed using correlational procedures. Predictive validity is evaluated through multiple regression analysis and the underlying factor structure of each instrument is evaluated through factor analysis.

Survey Validation: HealthStream Research completed a full-scale reliability and validity assessment of its employee survey. This assessment was based on over 14,000 employees from 54 health care facilities. Part of this evaluative process includes an evaluation of the convergent and discriminant validity of the scales on the survey. HealthStream Research’s assessment found that convergent and discriminant validity was strong for all scales on the survey. A second part of this assessment process was a technique called “factor analysis.” A factor analysis evaluates the survey for the underlying constructs that it measures and the questions associated with each construct. These two techniques help the researcher to know if the questions on the survey actually measure what they are purported to measure. A third technique employed by HealthStream Research is multiple regression. This technique is used to test how well survey items predict the overall satisfaction item. The items on the HealthStream Research Employee Insight Survey were found to be excellent predictors of the overall work satisfaction item.


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.