This week I have received numerous phone calls from healthcare administrators and board members, all with the same topic in mind: HCAHPS.

Survey results from the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers & Systems, or HCAHPS, are going public starting April 1st. What this means for our healthcare clients is potential patients and staff may look at their hospital HCAHPS scores online to decide whether or not to entrust in that hospital with their well-being.

Which leads to this week’s big question: “How do I get my arms around HCAHPS?”

The second big question is “What do I say to the media, my board, and the community about how we’re going to raise these scores? I need an HCAHPS strategy today!”

Fortunately for them, we at ILS have a plan to improve HCAHPS scores, to accomplish both short- and long-term goals. For short-term goals, our first steps are to identify quick fixes in your organization that will directly impact your HCAHPS scores. We will interpret the data (not over-analyze it) to keep your focus on the low-hanging fruit.

Leadership Schizophrenia

When your manager leaves a leadership meeting on a “hot” topic, and then comes back to the department team and says, “Drop everything! I have a new directive from the top… we now need to focus on this new thing…” The staff asks, “What about last week’s directive? That was so important.” The boss replies, “Yeah, that’s important, but this is even more important now!” and everyone’s shoulders shrug in unison.

The worst thing we could do is to perpetuate the greatest problem I see in healthcare leadership today: Leadership Schizophrenia. After each quick fix, we need a discussion on sustainability before we go onto the next quick fix, otherwise Leadership Schizophrenia sets in.

For long-term goals, we build a strategic implementation phase, where we cater to the needs of our clients: we can either do all the work, guide you to do all the work, or we can work together. Focusing on the long-term, we can also help you hardwire the processes to continually improve your survey scores and your hospital-wide patient experience.

If you’d like more information, call us today at (407) 859-2826 to get started.