Virginia Hospital & Healthcare Association Unveils New Patient and Family Experience Resources

September 20, 2017

VHHA’s Center for Healthcare Excellence launches new Patient and Family Experience webpage,
and debuts new Patient and Family Experience Improvement Guide with best practices for health care professionals

RICHMOND, VA – Making patients and their families feel welcome and comfortable as partners in the care and treatment process is a top priority for Virginia hospitals and health systems, which continuously strive to enhance the delivery of compassionate, patient-centric care. To support that work, the Virginia Hospital & Healthcare Association’s (VHHA) Center for Healthcare Excellence has produced two new tools to support hospitals and clinical staff in those efforts. Those tools, which can be accessed through the revamped Patient and Family Experience page on the VHHA.com website, are the new Patient and Family Experience Improvement Guide and the Virginia Hospital Patient Experience Data Dashboard.

The Patient and Family Experience Improvement Guide is a manual for Virginia hospitals and health systems developed by VHHA to support members’ work to enhance patient and family experience and performance on the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) patient satisfaction survey. The Guide was developed at the request of the VHHA Patient Experience Forum, a multi-disciplinary team of member hospital leaders. It highlights foundational strategies to strengthen leadership and staff engagement, offers topic-specific concepts, and features case studies from hospitals around Virginia. The Virginia Hospital Patient Experience Data Dashboard provides information on categorical performance measures as specified by the HCAHPS survey. This dashboard tool provides analyses in state performance distribution, individual hospital performance, and historical performance trends.

“Health care quality and patient safety improvement work is a top strategic priority for members of the Virginia hospital community. It is our shared goal to make the Commonwealth the healthiest state in the nation,” said Bon Secours Virginia Health System Chief Executive Officer Toni R. Ardabell, who chairs
the Center for Healthcare Excellence’s Advisory Council. “Our commitment to quality and safety is evidenced by the establishment of the collaborative VHHA Center for Healthcare Excellence in 2015, our support for quality and patient safety initiatives, and our work to implement and monitor best practices. The development by VHHA of these two new tools, the VHHA Patient and Family Experience Improvement Guide and the Virginia Hospital Patient Experience Data Dashboard, will help support this continuing work.”

The fruit of these quality and safety efforts are borne out in national metrics and other measures. For instance, Virginia is ranked in the top 10 among states in a recent assessment of health care quality. The latest annual National Healthcare Quality and Disparities Report (QDR) released by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) ranks Virginia ninth nationwide, showing significant improvement in the Commonwealth which had previously been in the middle-of-the-pack among states in those measures. Earlier this year, the Spring 2017 Hospital Safety Grade scores from the Leapfrog Group, a national health care patient safety ranking organization, showed 35 Virginia hospitals earning “A” grades. And Healthgrades named 21 Virginia hospitals as 2017 “Patient Safety Excellence Award” recipients, with nine Virginia hospitals earning 2017 Healthgrades “Outstanding Patient Experience Awards.”

“For the past two years, the staff of VHHA’s Center for Healthcare Excellence has facilitated a member-led Patient Experience Forum which has guided the ongoing statewide patient experience and HCAHPS improvement work,” said Abraham Segres, VHHA Vice President for Quality and Safety and Executive Director of the Center for Healthcare Excellence. “The new Improvement Guide and the Patient Experience Data Dashboard offer invaluable insights that can inform improvement efforts and provide a baseline for that work. We are pleased to offer it to members for their use.”

About VHHA: The Virginia Hospital & Healthcare Association is an alliance of 111 hospitals and 29 health delivery systems that develops and advocates for sound health care policy in the Commonwealth. Its vision is to achieve excellence in both health care and health. Its vision is through the power of collaboration to be recognized as a driving force behind making Virginia the healthiest state in the nation. Connect with VHHA through Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, and ISupportVirginiaHospitals.com.

Download the press release here.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact:
Julian Walker
Vice President of Communications
(804) 297-3193 office
(804) 304-7402 mobile
jtwalker@vhha.com