Background: Patient experience is increasingly recognized as a measure of healthcare quality and patient-centered care. However, there is insufficient understanding of patient expectations during hospitalization, and of how these are perceived by physicians, nurses, and administrators. The best way to apply the HCAHPS ratings remain elusive due to variability in practice environments, patient and clinician [...]

Background: Inpatient experience quality improvement efforts have traditionally been focused on increasing scores on the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey. Patients’ open-ended responses about their inpatient experiences may represent a previously unexamined resource for understanding patient motivation behind closed-ended responses. We aimed to describe responses to an HCAHPS open-ended survey [...]

Background: The Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey is an instrument used to evaluate patient experience and satisfaction during patients’ hospital stay. One of the areas assessed by the survey is education about medications. The survey asks patients how often they were educated about the purpose and possible side effects of [...]

Background: In the quest to improve patient satisfaction scores, providers and health systems alike are frustrated with the inability to obtain real-time satisfaction data. Indeed, HCAHPS data lags by six months, and makes it exceedingly difficult to provide real-time feedback to physicians on their communication with patients. As a result, we developed a patient-centered audit [...]

Background: Discharge planning and transition of care (TOC) is a crucial process for inpatient teams hoping to optimize patient experience and outcomes. Feedback from patients prior to leaving the hospital identifies several areas for improvement, as there are often misunderstandings about hospital courses and treatment plans. Such confusion leads to poor TOC. The Hospital Consumer [...]

Background: Patient experience is increasingly recognized as a measure of healthcare quality and patient-centered care. However, there is insufficient understanding of patient expectations during hospitalization, and of how these are perceived by physicians, nurses, and administrators. The best way to apply the HCAHPS ratings remain elusive due to variability in practice environments, patient and clinician [...]