Putting it in the complaint box.

CMS star ratings  for hospitals are related to patient satisfaction with care experiences based on data from the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems Survey (HCAHPS) measures. The survey covers such things as   how well nurses and physicians communicated with patients, responsiveness of hospital staff to patient needs,  the cleanliness and noise level of hospital environments  and how well patients were prepared for life after they left  the hospital.

Opponents of  CMS star ratings  complain that they oversimplify complex data, conveying  misleading information that can hurt reputations and reflect unfairly on certain hospitals.

However, Healthcare Dive reports that the move toward value-based care and transparency has led some healthcare organizations – such as Intermountain Healthcare and Geisinger Health System – to publish what patients think of them, for better or worse.

“Patient stories have a greater impact on clinicians more than metrics like HCAHPS,” Dr. Greg Burke, chief patient experience officer at Geisinger, told the publication  after a  recent panel discussion.

Geisinger has gotten a lot of publicity because of its unorthodox implementation of its “ProvenExperience money-back guarantee.”   Dr. Burke said that Geisinger posts on its Web site about 97-98 percent of the comments it receives from patients on the system’s clinicians.

He explains why and how the system does this. Please hit this link to read the full article.