Boston-based EveryPatient has launched a new patient satisfaction platform, saying it goes beyond traditional practices to provide real-time collection and automatic analysis of patient experience data.
Currently, hospitals and provider groups offer surveys days-to-weeks after discharge to assess patient satisfaction through the federal (Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems) HCAHPS program, EveryPatient said.
HCAHPS surveys are not intended to be a quality improvement tool, but to determine penalty payments from poor patient satisfaction scores. So HCAHPS don’t enhance hospitals’ or providers’ patient satisfaction strategy, according to EveryPatient.
With the EveryPatient platform, hospitals and provider groups have a structured in-hospital or in-clinic real-time data collection technology platform for patient satisfaction.
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“Healthcare organizations are increasingly viewing patient satisfaction as the foundation of good clinical care, patient engagement, and revenue cycle management,”Akindele Majekodunmi, MD, MBA, co-founder and CEO of EveryPatient, said in a statement.
“To date, however, they have been hamstrung by existing tools and approaches, and have not had the ability to implement a comprehensive satisfaction strategy that actually has an impact on satisfaction, scores, and revenue,” Majekodunmi added. “EveryPatient Platform is the first technology solution that addresses every aspect of patient satisfaction to positively impact the active patient experience, care delivery, HCAHPS scores, and revenue.”
For healthcare organizations, the EveryPatient platform can result in improved patient satisfaction, reduced patient dissatisfaction, higher HCAHPS scores exceeding payer-mandated satisfaction thresholds.
It also can enable prevention of revenue loss via payer penalties. In 2015, the average hospital lost about 1 million dollars (1.5 percent of Medicare revenue) due to low patient satisfaction scores, EveryPatient said.
The platform uses data collection to analyze and monitor satisfaction in real time, giving healthcare administrators a useful set of analytical tools.
Through dashboards and drill-downs, EveryPatient analytics empowers healthcare organizations to track their patient satisfaction scores via a proprietary algorithm that is a predictor for the HCAHPS scoring used by CMS to determine penalties.
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Healthcare organizations receive alerts when scores are at risk of falling below thresholds that impact millions of dollars in revenue. They can use the information to assess satisfaction levels and trends by organization, department and individuals, across any time frame.
Administrators can adjust and improve their patient satisfaction strategy and tactics to improve the patient experience, staff and provider engagement, and organizational performance. They can also inform marketing and service development initiatives with rich, demographic-based patient experience information.
The real-time data collection offers other benefits in addition to the current methodology of post-discharge email or phone surveys.
In trials, EveryPatient test sites collected completed responses of customized, proprietary 15-question surveys and real-time text and voice-input technology from more than 80 percent of patients. Traditional post-discharge patient surveys top out at 15 percent participation.
Using patient experience information captured during the patient’s stay or visit, the technology alerts providers and staff to issues in real-time, so they can take action to address or resolve them before they escalate, and before patients leave the facility.
The platform also encourages better engagement of providers and staff, resulting in more attention to the patient experience, happier patients, and higher satisfaction scores that are tied directly to revenue, the company said.
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