Change in our survey process – for the better!
Coffeyville Regional Medical Center has recently changed from a mail service only survey to a phone survey for patients discharged as of January 1, 2012. We are excited to report that our response rate has doubled since the change! If you have completed a phone survey for us, we would like to say "THANK YOU".
If you have been an inpatient at CRMC, you may be randomly selected to be surveyed. This process is done according to the standards set forth by CMS (Centers for Medicare Services). CRMC uses a third party vendor named PRESS GANEY. Unfortunately, at this time, they are unable to identify themselves on caller ID units. We are in the process of working with the vendor to display "on behalf of CRMC" as the caller name, but at this time it reads "toll free number". We will keep you up to date if that is able to change. At this time, we can only request that if you have been an inpatient and would like to participate in the survey, please answer your phone calls in the 1-2 weeks following discharge.
This seems a little silly to many of us, but it is actually a federal mandate. There are very specific guidelines that must be adhered to when surveying patients. This is because the survey results affect the payment the hospital will receive from a Medicare standpoint.
The Affordable Care Act outlines the new system for healthcare in America. This system determines how hospitals will be reimbursed for care they have already provided.
The system is very complex, but it does breakdown into some basic points. The hospitals are evaluated in two ways:
The process care measures are weighted at 70% and patient satisfaction is the remaining 30%.
Some of the measures assessed are:
CMS is withholding a percentage of payment from hospitals beginning with fiscal year 2013 which is discharge from the hospital as of July 1, 2011. The better a hospital performs on its quality measures, the greater the earn-back potential of the withheld payment will be. These care measures have been endorsed by national bodies of experts including the National Quality Forum. For further information or more specific guideline information, see the US Department of Health & Human Services website,www.HHS.gov.
Coffeyville Regional Medical Center is working hard to provide you the best quality care possible. CRMC is surveyed and accredited by the Joint Commission of American Hospitals, American College of Surgeons (Tatman Cancer Center) and CMS (Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services).
If you or a loved one has a quality concern about care received at Coffeyville Regional Medical Center, please contact Sarah Hoy Director of Quality Improvement/Risk Management (620) 252-1521. We welcome the opportunity to improve our processes to better meet your expectations.
So, the next time you receive that survey in the mail or a phone call from a third party company about your experience here, please take the time to complete it. The future of Coffeyville Regional Medical Center depends on it!
Quality indicators are medical information from patient records converted into a rate or percentage that shows how well hospitals care for their patients. Quality indicators give you information about how well a hospital provides care for some but not all of their patients. You can use this quality information to help you compare hospitals. All of the data is readily available on www.hospitalcompare.hhs.gov.
Quality Indicators include:
Coffeyville Regional Medical Center is leading the way in health care by being transparent about the quality of care we provide. Hospitals all across America are sharing information about patients' experience of care with the public. To view the latest published data, please visit the CMS Hospital Compare website and click on the Survey of Patients' Hospital Experiences tab.
HCAHPS (pronounced H-caps) is the first national, publicly reported survey of patients' perspective of their hospital care. As a part of CMS' (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid) public reporting initiatives, the HCAHPS patient experience data was released to the public on March 28, 2008.
The survey asks patients 27 questions about their hospital experience, including 18 questions items about key aspects of their hospital experience. These questions are bundled into eight categories and reported as ten "composite" scores.
The scores highlight the "always" results because this is the answer that most strongly indicates a patients' overall satisfaction.
As a community hospital, the Hospital Board and Leadership support transparency and providing patients with information about the quality of care they receive.
If you have any quality of care concerns, please contact Sarah Hoy, RN, Director of Quality Improvement/Risk Management for Coffeyville Regional Medical Center at (620)252-1521 or sarah@crmcinc.org.