The road to patient experience of care measurement: lessons from the United States

Patient-centered care has become an increasing priority in the United States and plays a prominent role in recent healthcare reforms. One way the country has managed to advance patient-centered care is through establishment of a family of national patient experience surveys (the Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems Plans (CAHPS). CAHPS is publicly reported for several types of providers and was recently tied to hospital reimbursement. This is part of a trend over the last two decades that has shifted provider-patient relationships from a traditional paternal approach to customer service and then to clinical partnership. The health care system in Israel, however, is still struggling to overcome barriers to change in this area. While community based biannual patient experience surveys are conducted by the Myers-JDC-Brookdale Institute, there is no comprehensive national approach to measuring the patient experience across a broad range of settings. Only recently did the Israeli Ministry of Health take its first steps to include patient experience as a dimension of health care quality. In its current position, Israel should learn from the U.S. experience with policies promoting patient-centered care, and specifically the impact on clinical services of measuring the patient experience. Looking at what has happened in the United States, we suggest three main lessons. First, there is a need for a set of national patient experience surveys that would be publicly reported and eventually tied to provider reimbursement. Secondly, the national survey tools should be customized to the unique characteristics of Israeli society and draw from recent research on patient-centeredness to include new and important domains such as patient activation and shared decision-making. Finally, newer technological approaches should be explored with the aim of increasing response rates and the timeliness and usefulness of the surveys

Developing a Framework for Evaluating the Patient Engagement, Quality, and Safety of Mobile Applications

Rising ownership of smartphones and tablets across social and demographic groups has made mobile applications, or apps, a potentially promising tool for engaging patients in their health care, particularly those with high health care needs. Through a systematic search of iOS (Apple) and Android app stores and an analysis of apps targeting individuals with chronic illnesses, we assessed the degree to which apps are likely to be useful in patient engagement efforts. Usefulness was determined based on the following criteria: description of engagement, relevance to the targeted patient population, consumer ratings and reviews, and most recent app update. Among the 1,046 health care–related, patient-facing applications identified by our search, 43 percent of iOS apps and 27 percent of Android apps appeared likely to be useful. We also developed criteria for evaluating the patient engagement, quality, and safety of mobile apps

Patient-Facing Mobile Apps to Treat High-Need, High-Cost Populations: A Scoping Review

BACKGROUND: Self-management is essential to caring for high-need, high-cost (HNHC) populations. Advances in mobile phone technology coupled with increased availability and adoption of health-focused mobile apps have made self-management more achievable, but the extent and quality of the literature supporting their use is not well defined. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this review was to assess the breadth, quality, bias, and types of outcomes measured in the literature supporting the use of apps targeting HNHC populations. METHODS: Data sources included articles in PubMed and MEDLINE (National Center for Biotechnology Information), EMBASE (Elsevier), the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (EBSCO), Web of Science (Thomson Reuters), and the NTIS (National Technical Information Service) Bibliographic Database (EBSCO) published since 2008. We selected studies involving use of patient-facing iOS or Android mobile health apps. Extraction was performed by 1 reviewer; 40 randomly selected articles were evaluated by 2 reviewers to assess agreement. RESULTS: Our final analysis included 175 studies. The populations most commonly targeted by apps included patients with obesity, physical handicaps, diabetes, older age, and dementia. Only 30.3% (53/175) of the apps studied in the reviewed literature were identifiable and available to the public through app stores. Many of the studies were cross-sectional analyses (42.9%, 75/175), small (median number of participants=31, interquartile range 11.0-207.2, maximum 11,690), or performed by an app\u27s developers (61.1%, 107/175). Of the 175 studies, only 36 (20.6%, 36/175) studies evaluated a clinical outcome. CONCLUSIONS: Most apps described in the literature could not be located on the iOS or Android app stores, and existing research does not robustly evaluate the potential of mobile apps. Whereas apps may be useful in patients with chronic conditions, data do not support this yet. Although we had 2-3 reviewers to screen and assess abstract eligibility, only 1 reviewer abstracted the data. This is one limitation of our study. With respect to the 40 articles (22.9%, 40/175) that were assigned to 2 reviewers (of which 3 articles were excluded), inter-rater agreement was significant on the majority of items (17 of 30) but fair-to-moderate on others

Measuring patient-perceived quality of care in US hospitals using Twitter

ABSTRACT Background Patients routinely use Twitter to share feedback about their experience receiving healthcare. Identifying and analysing the content of posts sent to hospitals may provide a novel real-time measure of quality, supplementing traditional, survey-based approaches. Objective To assess the use of Twitter as a supplemental data stream for measuring patientperceived quality of care in US hospitals and compare patient sentiments about hospitals with established quality measures. Design 404 065 tweets directed to 2349 US hospitals over a 1-year period were classified as having to do with patient experience using a machine learning approach. Sentiment was calculated for these tweets using natural language processing. 11 602 tweets were manually categorised into patient experience topics. Finally, hospitals with ≥50 patient experience tweets were surveyed to understand how they use Twitter to interact with patients. Key results Roughly half of the hospitals in the US have a presence on Twitter. Of the tweets directed toward these hospitals, 34 725 (9.4%) were related to patient experience and covered diverse topics. Analyses limited to hospitals with ≥50 patient experience tweets revealed that they were more active on Twitter, more likely to be below the national median of Medicare patients ( p<0.001) and above the national median for nurse/patient ratio ( p=0.006), and to be a nonprofit hospital ( p<0.001). After adjusting for hospital characteristics, we found that Twitter sentiment was not associated with Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) ratings (but having a Twitter account was), although there was a weak association with 30-day hospital readmission rates ( p=0.003). Conclusions Tweets describing patient experiences in hospitals cover a wide range of patient care aspects and can be identified using automated approaches. These tweets represen

Assessing EHR use during hospital morning rounds: A multi-faceted study.

BackgroundThe majority of U.S hospitals have implemented electronic health records (EHRs). While the benefits of EHRs have been widely touted, little is known about their effects on inpatient care, including how well they meet workflow needs and support care.ObjectiveAssess the extent to which EHRs support care team workflow during hospital morning rounds.DesignWe applied a mixed-method approach including observations of care teams during morning rounds, semi-structured interviews and an electronic survey of hospital inpatient clinicians. Structured field notes taken during observations were used to identify workflow patterns for analysis. We applied a grounded theory approach to extract emerging themes from interview transcripts and used SPSS Statistics 24 to analyze survey responses.SettingMedical units at a major teaching hospital in New England.ResultsData triangulation across the three analyses yielded four main findings: (1) a high degree of variance in the ways care teams use EHRs during morning rounds. (2) Pervasive use of workarounds at critical points of care (3) EHRs are not used for information sharing and frequently impede intra-care team communication. (4) System design and hospital room settings do not adequately support care team workflow.ConclusionsGaps between EHR design and the functionality needed in the complex inpatient environment result in lack of standardized workflows, extensive use of workarounds and team communication issues. These issues pose a threat to patient safety and quality of care. Possible solutions need to include improvements in EHR design, care team training and changes to the hospital room setting

The impact of medical informatics on patient satisfaction: A USA-based literature review

Quality of care a b s t r a c t Purpose: Patient satisfaction is increasingly recognized as an important component of quality. The expansion of health information technologies (HIT) might have an impact on patient satisfaction -either positively or negatively. We conducted a literature review to explore the impact of these technologies on patient satisfaction. Methods: The database of PubMed was searched from inception through May 2010, using the MeSH terms "Medical Informatics" and "Patient Satisfaction". We included all original interventional studies regardless of their study design that were published in English and were evaluating HIT impact on patient satisfaction. Studies were categorized by technology type according to the American Medical Informatics Association framework and by study design. The major outcome of interest was the HIT impact on patient satisfaction. Results: Of 1293 citations reviewed, 56 studies met our inclusion criteria. Design of these studies included mostly randomized controlled trials (RCTs) (n = 20, 36%), cross-sectional surveys (n = 17, 30%), and a pre and post studies (n = 14, 25%). Overall, 54% (n = 30) of the studies demonstrated a positive effect of HIT on patient satisfaction, 34% (n = 19) failed to show any effect, 11% (n = 6) had inconclusive results, and 2% (n = 1) revealed a negative effect. Of the 20 RCTs, 40% (n = 8) showed a positive effect of HIT on patient satisfaction, 50% (n = 10) failed to show any effect, and 10% (2) had inconclusive results. Conclusions: Analysis suggested that while there is some evidence that HIT improves patient satisfaction, studies in this literature review, and in particularly RCTs, were not consistent in their findings. Although HIT may be a promising tool to improve patient satisfaction, more well-designed research studies are needed in order to get a better understanding of this domain and accordingly find new opportunities to improve quality of care. 142 i n t e r n a t i o n a l j o u r n a l o f m e d i c a l i n f o r m a t i c s 8 2 ( 2 0 1 3 ) 141-15