Issue link: https://beckershealthcare.uberflip.com/i/824946
7 PATIENT SAFETY Key to Safe, Patient-Centered Care? Employee Engagement, Press Ganey Says By Heather Punke H ospitals with lower infection and readmission rates and shorter lengths of stay tend to have higher HCAHPS scores, according to a Press Ganey special report released March 29. "Patients' perceptions of their care experience can be considered a surrogate for the degree to which an organization delivers on its promise to provide safe, quality, patient-centered care," the report — "Achieving Excellence: e Con- vergence of Safety, Quality, Experience and Caregiver Engagement" — reads. "ese data tell us that patients know safe, quality care when they see it, and that when they receive it their overall care experience is better." For instance, hospitals that perform in the top quartile in overall HCAHPS scores have lower rates of central line-associated bloodstream infections, catheter-associated urinary tract infections, Clostridium difficile infections and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus in- fections. Additionally, hospitals with higher patient ex- perience scores tend to fare better on financial metrics than those that don't. So, patient experience is intertwined with pa- tient safety and quality as well as financials, and "excellence across all domains hinges on culture," says Nell Buhlman, Press Ganey's chief strategy officer. She calls it the "un- derpinning of being able to deliver truly pa- tient-centered care that is safe, high-quality and delivered with compassion." e report shows that hospitals with higher HCAHPS scores also tend to have higher phy- sician engagement, employee engagement and nursing perception of care environment scores. In other words, they have a cohesive culture. e relationship between care safety, quali- ty and experience and caregiver engagement "indicate that meaningful progress toward high-quality, harm-free, compassionate, connected healthcare requires a highly en- gaged workforce supported by a strong cul- tural foundation," according to the report. And because these are all tied into a hospi- tals' financial success, it should be a strategic imperative to develop a supportive culture to engage employees. Ms. Buhlman recommends hospitals start measuring employee engagement and nurse perception of practice environment if they haven't already. If they find some units are very far from engaged, hospital leaders should see that as a "call to action … a burn- ing platform" to start building engagement and culture, she says. n Study: SC Hospitals See 22% Drop in Post-Surgical Deaths With Use of Checklist-Based Quality Program By Morgan Haefner S outh Carolina hospitals that implemented a voluntary checklist-based surgical quality improvement program experienced a 22 percent reduction in post-operative deaths, according to a study in the Annals of Surgery. The Safe Surgery South Carolina program invited the state's hospitals to complete a 12-step implementation pro- gram, called the World Health Organization Surgical Safe- ty Checklist, in collaboration with Ariadne Labs, the South Carolina Hospital Association and Boston-based Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Fourteen hospitals rep- resenting about 40 percent of the state's inpatient surgery volume participated in the 12-step program, which includ- ed customizing the checklist to each hospital's setting. Researchers compared post-surgery death rates us- ing statewide all-payer discharge claims from 2008 to 2013. The claims data was linked to state vital statistics and stratified based on hospitals' implementation of the program. In addition, study authors compared chang- es in risk-adjusted 30-day mortality among hospitals. By December 2013, 14 hospitals had completed the check- list-based surgical safety program. Those 14 hospitals saw post-operative deaths decrease from 3.38 percent in 2010 to 2.84 percent in 2013. The hospitals that did not implement the program saw their post-surgery mortality rates increase from 3.5 percent to 3.71 percent during the same period, rep- resenting a 22 percent difference between the two groups. "Our research suggests that the checklist serves as a cata- lyst for these changes, but that leaders and frontline clini- cians, including surgeons, must engage in implementation to produce a meaningful clinical change," the study authors concluded. "Further work in implementation science must focus on identifying factors and interventions that can sup- port or inhibit hospitals' ability to meaningfully employ pa- tient safety innovations." n