Background: The HCAHPS survey is used nationally by health systems as a standard to measure the patient experience and identify opportunities for improvement. Historically, process improvement initiatives based on the survey are implemented retroactively, attempting to prevent negative experiences for future patients. However, given the increasing complexity of patient care, proactively addressing the identified concerns [...]

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: Effectively communicating information to a patient is the driving force for a successful physician-patient relationship. Patient outcomes depend on successful communication. As efficiency metrics and clinical productivity remain top priorities for most health systems, time spent with each patient gets affected hindering effective patient-physician communication. This in turn affects the HCAHPS (Hospital Consumer Assessment [...]

Background: Joint physician-nurse rounding is an important best practice that facilitates communication and patient participation in their care while improving outcomes and satisfaction. Interdisciplinary bedside rounding has been shown to reduce mortality, lengths of stay, medication errors, and readmissions while improving staff engagement, teamwork, and patient experience (1, 2, 3). In 2018, our hospital added [...]

Background: Sitting at the bedside improves patients’ perception of their interactions with their physicians. Despite these data, prior work shows that medicine interns sit during only 9% of observed physician-patient interactions. We aimed to assess perceived importance of and barriers to sitting at the bedside among a group of internal medicine residents. These results have [...]

Background: During hospitalization, many patients cannot identify the physician responsible for their care. Among patients cared for by a hospitalist, many of them are meeting their hospitalist for the first time. Previous work has shown that patients can meet up to 7 physicians and 18 other health professionals during a hospital stay. The large number [...]

Background: Hospitalized patients placed on contact, droplet, or respiratory isolation due to a carrier state or infection with resistant or highly communicable organisms report higher rates of anxiety and loneliness and have fewer physician encounters, room entries, vital sign records, physician and nursing notes in the chart. For these reasons, it has been hypothesized that [...]

Background: Patient and family experience of care is a keystone of high-value care and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ value-based purchasing incentives for hospitals. As a result, most hospitals and health systems nationally have invested in improving patient experience. While hospitalists can greatly influence patient experience priorities, there is little is known about [...]

Background: Hospitals across the country struggle with improving patient experience and there is limited data on factors that drive positive or negative scores on the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAPHS) survey.  We sought to better understand which predictors may lead to a top box score.  Methods: Administrative and clinical data were [...]

Background:   The overall national patient satisfaction scores have improved since the HCAHPS reporting began. However, it is unknown whether the improvement trends are different between teaching and non-teaching hospitals. Therefore, our objective was to compare long-term changes in patient satisfaction between teaching and non-teaching hospitals. Methods:   We used three datasets; HCAHPS data (2008 [...]