As a hospice organization, not only do you need to ensure the efficiency and effectiveness of your operations, but you also need to prioritize the comfort of your patients and their families during a challenging time. How can you amplify your impact in both areas? Start by analyzing how you manage your durable medical equipment (DME) services and understand where improvements could lead to a positive DME impact on CAHPS scores.
The Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS) program uses a range of surveys to understand patients' experiences with healthcare providers and allow those providers to gain insights into how they can improve their quality of care. The CAHPS Hospice Survey, administered by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, is designed specifically to rate hospice care.
The survey generates a score based on answers to 47 questions across eight categories, including communication, emotional support, and training. That Family Caregiver Survey Rating is published on the Care Compare website to help caregivers research hospice options. Poor scores can damage your reputation and cause those seeking care to look elsewhere.
DME services are a cornerstone of hospice care. A seamless experience with DME, including timely delivery, pickup, and problem resolution, reduces stress and improves satisfaction.
Patients receiving hospice care often experience challenging symptoms that affect their quality of life. Prompt delivery of durable medical equipment can improve comfort and help patients and families adapt to their situation.
Timely pickup of DME is especially important for caregivers, as revealed by an analysis of CAHPS results. Once the patient is off service, the family needs the equipment removed as quickly as possible by a DME technician sensitive to the family's situation.
Receiving quick resolutions to problems helps patients and families feel supported and builds satisfaction. Equally important is a systematic approach to preventing problems before they can occur.
Proactive prevention reduces the recurrence of problems while allowing alignment of service level expectations. We have found that most issues stem from miscommunication. Having flexible DME providers that clients consider teammates is essential to great patient care.
While CAHPS surveys don't specifically ask about DME options for hospice, a number of the questions are related, so it’s important to acknowledge the DME impact on CAHPS scores.
Delivery delays, a lack of training, or a lack of empathy might make families feel unheard or unsupported. These feelings could impact survey answers and lead to low satisfaction and scores.
Better DME management is key to improving hospice CAHPS scores. A proactive plan developed with a dedicated DME partner has the following benefits:
Smart DME solutions integrate with your electronic medical record for faster, easier, and more accurate orders.
Working with a DME partner with a large vendor network benefits your patients. DME partners, such as Qualis, negotiate preferred rates with a broad selection of suppliers, so you can quickly find hard-to-source items and prevent delays.
Qualis' solutions offer delivery tracking so you can monitor updates on the go. You'll receive alerts about delays and find quick substitutions from more than 900 DME providers.
Better DME management improves access to equipment and prevents common issues that lead to patient and family stress. With Qualis' proactive DME solutions, hospices deliver more attentive care, leading to higher satisfaction and 4% higher CAHPS scores, on average, than peers.
Ready to improve your CAHPS scores and patient satisfaction? Let Qualis show you how proactive DME management makes a measurable difference. Contact us today to learn more.