HCAHPS SURVEY

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), along with the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), developed the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) Survey, also known as Hospital CAHPS^®, to provide a standardized survey instrument and data-collection methodology for measuring patients’ perspectives on hospital care.

The HCAHPS Survey asks recently discharged patients about aspects of their hospital experience that they are uniquely suited to address. The core of the survey contains 21 items that ask “how often” or whether patients experienced a critical aspect of hospital care, rather than whether they were “satisfied” with their care. Also included in the survey are four screener items that direct patients to relevant questions, five items to adjust for the mix of patients across hospitals, and two items that support Congressionally mandated reports. Hospitals may add supplemental items after the core HCAHPS items.

Sources:
¹HCAHPS Online. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Web. 9 November 2016. www.hcahpsonline.org.

²Medicare.gov: The Official U.S. Government Site for Medicare. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Web. 9 November 2016. medicare.gov.

CASE STUDY: MOUNTAIN VIEW HOSPITAL, PAYSON, UTAH

The success of a recent $5.5-million expansion and redesign of Mountain View Hospital’s Emergency Department (ED) in Payson, Utah, hinged upon specialized sliding “barn doors.” The project doubled the size of the ED to more than 10,000 square feet.

The doors—popular in medical construction for their space-saving form, acoustical privacy, and easy-to-use functionality—helped upgrade the hospital’s ED, completed in November 2014, to a “cutting-edge” design, says Nathan Murray, design principal of TSA Architects of Salt Lake City. “It was critical that we create transparency in the ED so that everyone—doctors, nurses, staff, and patients—can look around and immediately see what’s heading their way,” Murray says. The sliding doors enabled the team to maximize the space in an efficient way so it could “achieve a fluid environment that can respond to the fluctuating levels of demand placed on it at any given time,” he adds.

The sliding doors are designed specifically for medical clinics, hospital exam rooms, and other applications. Unlike traditional pocket or patio sliding doors, these barn doors are easier to operate and easier to clean—elements critical to health-care construction.

The doors offer space savings, superior durability, and acoustic mitigation. ADA-compliant operation and “soft close” technology ensure that patients of all ages and abilities can easily open and close the door. The door system used can also be sealed on all four sides of the door leaf, providing the best possible noise reduction to maintain speech privacy standards.

Murray says the hospital management had expressed the desire for a healing environment for patients and their families—and that the emergency department appeal to everyone, including kids.

“We now have the means to provide a broad range of emergency care services faster to even more people,” says Kevin Johnson, CEO at Mountain View Hospital. “This state-of-the-art expansion, combined with our award-winning ED processes, will help us to deliver care in the most effective manner possible.”

Photo: Jim Fairchild

Project: TSA Architects