By Healthcare Facilities Today

In an article in the October issue of Healthcare Facilities Management, Debbie Hurst, R.N., CIC, program manager of the infection control department at Asante Rogue Regional Medical Center in Medford, Ore., offers a nurse's perspective on The Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey on patients' perspective on hospital care.

The HCAHPS survey is the first national, standardized, publicly reported survey of patients' perspectives. HCAHPS scores are included among the measures to calculate value-based incentive payments in the hospital value-based purchasing program, according to the article.

To understand the nurse's perspective on improving the patient satisfaction scores that relate to the care of the environment, Hurst wrote, it is important for hospital environmental services (ES) professionals to be aware that cleanliness of the environment is a patient care function that originally was part of the nurse's role and now includes ES staff and infection control professionals. 

But the first and foremost goal of nurses isn't to increase a patient score related to perception. Instead, it is to provide the safest, best care possible for patients with the resources at hand. Once this has been accomplished, the nurses' second goal is to help the patients realize that the first goal has been met, according to the article

"So, obviously, nurses cannot begin by reviewing HCAHPS scores nor develop strategies for changing how they provide patient care based solely on rankings and percentiles of patient perceptions. Instead, it begins with making sure they are providing the safest and best care for their patients and then using the patient perspective scores as one means among many to measure overall care when looking for improvement opportunities," Hurst said.

Read the article.