The Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS) survey is issued by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). CMS gives this survey to patients and their families to hear about their experiences with healthcare providers and their healthcare plans. Surveys can vary based on topic. For example, the hospital CAHPS survey differs from the hospice CAHPS survey.
CMS uses the responses from these surveys to determine how well healthcare organizations are meeting expectations. Low CAHPS scores can negatively affect your healthcare facility's reputation and result in reduced funding. If there are issues with your operational efficiency, like if you don't have the proper equipment, patient and caregiver experience satisfaction will decrease along with your CAHPS scores.
One major thing that can impact your CAHPS survey responses is your durable medical equipment (DME) services. DME refers to medical devices and supplies that a healthcare provider prescribes, including wheelchairs, hospital beds, blood sugar meters, and CPAP machines. If you've been having issues sourcing equipment, you may have noticed a DME impact on CAHPS scores. Most CAHPS surveys have 19 questions directly influenced by the quality of your DME management.
If you don't have the proper DME on hand when you need it, you risk low CAHPS scores and endangering the patient. It can be incredibly frustrating and emotionally draining for patients, their families, and their caregivers to wait for crucial medical equipment. Additionally, having the right equipment at the ready ensures you get the patient what they need immediately. Anticipating patient needs prevents any unnecessary health risks they may undergo while waiting for their equipment to arrive.
Good vendors should also educate nurses and families on how to best use these devices in a way that's both compassionate and thorough. Patient satisfaction often increases when they feel prepared and informed about their care.
Proper DME management reduces stress for your staff, patients, and patients' families. You won't feel like you're scrambling to get your patients the devices they need, and staff will feel confident in their knowledge of these devices.
Handling the various aspects of durable medical equipment management can be frustrating. There's a lot to coordinate, from ordering to shipping to coordinating with insurance and paying vendors. Qualis is a DME management partner that can help tackle all of this and subsequently raise your hospice patient satisfaction through a variety of business management services.
We offer centralized reporting, which includes real-time tracking. This allows your facility to see exactly where your equipment is in transit. If there's a holdup, we'll handle these issues for you. Did a package get lost, or is inclement weather causing considerable delays? When this happens, our service team jumps in to make sure you're taken care of so you can focus more on patient care.
We also offer a robust vendor network to increase durable medical equipment reliability. You'll always have peace of mind knowing you're never out of options. Having a vast vendor network gives you access to competitive pricing and a wider variety of DME options to best meet the needs of every patient and increase your hospice quality of care.
At Qualis, we keep you on track, too. Our knowledgeable staff holds regular business reviews to go over goals against benchmarking best practices and make sure you're not over- or underutilizing equipment — ultimately saving money but also providing the right equipment at the right time.
And because we offer a variety of vendor options, you aren't stuck with one choice. For example, maybe one vendor has highly rated wheelchairs, but another has five-star blood pressure monitors. Qualis gives you both the knowledge and the options to choose vendors that will make the DME impact on CAHPS scores positive for your facility.
CAHPS scores are important because they affect your facility's reputation and funding. Poor DME management can delay patient care. As CAHPS scores are primarily based on patient experiences, poor DME management directly impacts them.
To understand more about the state of your DME system, check out our free DME evaluation. Our experts will evaluate your DME needs, find DME-related inefficiencies, and help you find the most efficient path forward. Feel free to contact us with any questions or read testimonials to hear how we've helped facilities just like yours.