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Improving HCAHPS Scores
Study:
Patients With
More Health
Information
Give Higher
HCAHPS Scores
By Ellie Rizzo
P
roviding patients with understandable informa-
tion about their conditions or procedures may af-
fect their perception of care quality as reflected in
HCAHPS scores.
A study by Emmi Solutions examined HCAHPS scores for pa-
tients who had viewed an understandable, multimodal expla-
nation of their conditions or procedures created by Emmi in
comparison with patients who had no extra explanations other
than those that were provided by their care teams. The study
examined results for nearly 67,000 HCAHPS scores across 17
hospitals over six years.
Upon giving patients the extra information, 65 percent of
hospitals experienced greater than 5 percent improvement
in Top Box Answers, 88 percent experienced greater than 5
percent improvement on physician communication scores
and 41 percent experienced greater than 5 percent im-
provement on whether or not patients would rec-
ommend the hospital.
For scores tracked by CMS, 15 or more of the
hospitals reported improvement between 2
percent and 11 percent for any given item.
These improvements included:
• Communication with physicians —
6 percent increase
• Communication with nurses —
5 percent increase
• Responsiveness of staff —
11 percent increase
• Pain Management —
6 percent increase
• Communication about medi-
cine — 6 percent increase
• Hospital environment —
2 percent increase
• Discharge information —
7 percent increase
• Overall rating —8 percent increase
• Would recommend — 7 percent increase n
