The Latest: HAP has garnered another opportunity to work with the American Hospital Association’s Health Research and Education Trust (HRET) in a second project to help hospitals improve their Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) results by improving quality, safety, and the patient experience of care. The HRET project is funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality (AHRQ). Implementation of the 2013 HCAHPS Project is scheduled to begin on December 7, 2012. Additional information about the 2013 project is available in HAP Memo 12-109.

Background: A patient’s experience of care, as measured by HCAHPS, will account for 30 percent of each Medicare inpatient prospective payment system (IPPS) hospital’s value based purchasing (VBP) score. Overall VBP scores for individual hospitals, when compared with all Medicare IPPS hospitals, will determine whether a hospital will be able to recover some, or all, of Medicare fee-for-service payments withheld for federal fiscal year 2013 (beginning October 1, 2012). For Pennsylvania IPPS hospitals, nearly $38 million dollars in Medicare payments are at risk in the first year of the VBP program. Within five years, 2 percent (approximately $90 million) of Medicare fee-for-service inpatient payments to Pennsylvania general acute care hospitals will be at risk in the VBP program.

Additional Information:

• HCAHPS Project Flyer
• CMS National Provider Call Slides: Hospital Value-Based Purchasing Dry Run of the FY 2013 Hospital VBP Program (February 2012)
• CMS Frequently Asked Questions about Hospital VBP Program (March 2012)
• FY 2014 Achievement Performance Standards for Patient Experience of Care Measures (November 2011 Federal Register)
• HealthLeaders Media Impact Analysis: Value-Based Purchasing - Facing the HCAHPS Hurdle

Additional Resources:

HAP Analysis of Composite HCAHPS Score and State Ranking based on Hospital Compare Data (First Quarter 2012) 1 Page(s) / 9.46 Kb - Download time approximately 0.1 secs on a 1.0 mb connection Adobe Acrobat - Download a viewer for this attachment - How to Download

HAP Analysis of State Ranks by HCAHPS Domain based on Hospital Compare Data (First Quarter 2012) 1 Page(s) / 12.80 Kb - Download time approximately 0.1 secs on a 1.0 mb connection Adobe Acrobat - Download a viewer for this attachment - How to Download

Case Study: “Responsiveness” A Conversation About the Domain “answering…sympathetic” (Webster)—The Chester County Hospital and Health System 10 Page(s) / 648.64 Kb - Download time approximately 6.1 secs on a 1.0 mb connection Adobe Acrobat - Download a viewer for this attachment - How to Download

Case Study: Monongahela Valley Hospital’s Journey to Excellence—Communication with Nurses 11 Page(s) / 700.25 Kb - Download time approximately 6.6 secs on a 1.0 mb connection Adobe Acrobat - Download a viewer for this attachment - How to Download

Case Study: HCAHPS Workshop Strategies for Success—St. Joseph Medical Center 8 Page(s) / 127.70 Kb - Download time approximately 1.2 secs on a 1.0 mb connection Adobe Acrobat - Download a viewer for this attachment - How to Download

Case Study: Communication Regarding Medicine—St. Luke’s University Hospital Bethlehem 12 Page(s) / 618.95 Kb - Download time approximately 5.8 secs on a 1.0 mb connection Adobe Acrobat - Download a viewer for this attachment - How to Download

• Enrollment in 2013 AHRQ / HRET Project to Improve HCAHPS Results
  HAP Memo
• Enrollment in National Project to Improve HCAHPS® Results
  HAP Memo