3/10/08

Bullet-Proofing Your HCAHPS Strategy

Because our mission is to present you with immediately-actionable strategies and resources to maximize your patient's experience, we are pleased to present the following HCAHPS and service excellence items for your consideration and use.

To illustrate the over-arching importance of a well-planned HCAHPS strategy, I thought a little 'crystal ball' exercise might be useful.

So, just for a minute, let's imagine we're in August, 2008, and your HCAHPS scores were just released:

Your publicly reported scores indicate a downward trend in 3 significant areas

Your Board Chair receives a call from a reporter, asking pointed questions:
"why are your scores trending down?"
"what are you doing about it?"
...and so it begins.

The simple scenario I just described is, as you can imagine, just the tip of the iceberg.

So, I challenge you to take a hard look at your HCAHPS strategy, and ask "are we really prepared?". Specifically:

Are your staff prepared?

Have you engaged your staff in creating an atmosphere of continual improvement in the patient experience?

Are your leaders informed, engaged, and capable to lead through the HCAHPS era?

Is your Communications team prepared?

Is your culture helping or hurting your outcome?

I urge you to take the necessary action now and to put the following five items on your next

Executive Agenda for immediate action:

Fully-leverage your internal/system resources around the HCAHPS initiative

Consult with your survey vendor for unique perspective and expertise

Find an external coach or consultant to help you refine and implement your HCAHPS service excellence strategy (visit us at Custom Learning Systems)

Plan to attend the Healthcare Service Excellence Conference to learn strategies and tips from industry leaders.

Consider an HCAHPS-specific, or other patient satisfaction related expert speaker to address your next board/trustee event and solidify senior-level support

...or you can always just give me a call at 1800-667-7325!

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