Hey HCAHPS - get in line…
Last week I attended the “Power of Impressions,” a terrific conference sponsored by the Beryl Institute. The majority of the participants were marketing leaders from healthcare provider organizations around the country, and one of the hot topics was the publishing of the HCAHPS results by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).
HCAHPS stands for Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS), a survey that “asks patients about their experiences with medical, surgical, or maternity care during a recent overnight stay in the hospital,” according to the CMS web site. For the first time, patient satisfaction results would be published for all the world to see. Based on the conversations at the conference, there was much hand-wringing back at the hospitals and health systems about the survey results, which were published on Friday. How would consumers react to bad scores? How would this impact a hospital’s reputation? How would hospitals explain low scores? How would business suffer?
And what happened? Well, at least in the Twin Cities, pretty much nothing. The Star Tribune – the primary newspaper in the Twin Cities – ran a brief blurb (less than 100 words) titled “How does your hospital compare?” which promoted the CMS web site and gave a broad description of the survey.
Why barely a ripple in the media, given the highly competitive hospital market that is the Twin Cities? From a media perspective, there’s not much of a story – nothing scandalous, nothing sensational. Perhaps in smaller communities, where the hospital is a top community entity, low scores might have led to an actual story. But in this market, and undoubtedly most others, HCAHPS is likely seen as just one more web site that compares hospitals in a different way (the CMS site already reported on other comparison points, such as outcomes and volumes).
The same is most likely true of consumers and patients. How many had heard of HCAHPS before Friday? Very, very few. How many know of it now? Not much more. And even if they do, for most consumers HCAHPS is another in a long list of resources for evaluating hospital and healthcare choices. HealthGrades, JHACO, the Leapfrog Group, Thomson’s Top 100 Hospitals, U.S. News and World Report, J.D. Power ratings, state government web sites, hospital association web sites – the list goes on and on. What’s one more?
Surely, HCAHPS could have dramatic repercussions for healthcare providers if Medicare reimbursement is tied to results. But again, this happens behind the scenes, without consumer knowledge or understanding. So for hospitals and health systems, HCAHPS may be an important measuring stick, but from a brand building and competitive standpoint, its power is diluted by the overflow of comparison data available to consumers.