Objective: To explore evidence on the links between patient experience and clinical safety and effectiveness outcomes. Design: Systematic review. Setting: A wide range of settings within primary and secondary care including hospitals and primary care centres. Participants: A wide range of demographic groups and age groups. Primary and secondary outcome measures: A broad range of patient safety and clinical effectiveness outcomes including mortality, physical symptoms, length of stay and adherence to treatment. Results: This study, summarising evidence from 55 studies, indicates consistent positive associations between patient experience, patient safety and clinical effectiveness for a wide range of disease areas, settings, outcome measures and study designs. It demonstrates positive associations between patient experience and self-rated and objectively measured health outcomes; adherence to recommended clinical practice and medication; preventive care (such as health-promoting behaviour, use of screening services and immunisation); and resource use (such as hospitalisation, length of stay and primary-care visits). There is some evidence of positive associations between patient experience and measures of the technical quality of care and adverse events. Overall, it was more common to find positive associations between patient experience and patient safety and clinical effectiveness than no associations. Conclusions: The data presented display that patient experience is positively associated with clinical effectiveness and patient safety, and support the case for the inclusion of patient experience as one of the central pillars of quality in healthcare. It supports the argument that the three dimensions of quality should be looked at as a group and not in isolation. Clinicians should resist sidelining patient experience as too subjective or mood-oriented, divorced from the ‘real’ clinical work of measuring safety and effectiveness.

https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/bmjopen/3/1/e001570.full.pdf

A systematic review of evidence on the links between patient experience and clinical safety and effectiveness

Background Total hip or knee replacement is highly successful when judged by prosthesis-related outcomes. However, some people experience long-term pain. Objectives To review published studies in representative populations with total hip or knee replacement for the treatment of osteoarthritis reporting proportions of people by pain intensity. Data sources MEDLINE and EMBASE databases searched to January 2011 with no language restrictions. Citations of key articles in ISI Web of Science and reference lists were checked. Study eligibility criteria, participants and interventions Prospective studies of consecutive, unselected osteoarthritis patients representative of the primary total hip or knee replacement population, with intensities of patient-centred pain measured after 3 months to 5-year follow-up. Study appraisal and synthesis methods Two authors screened titles and abstracts. Data extracted by one author were checked independently against original articles by a second. For each study, the authors summarised the proportions of people with different severities of pain in the operated joint. Results Searches identified 1308 articles of which 115 reported patient-centred pain outcomes. Fourteen articles describing 17 cohorts (6 with hip and 11 with knee replacement) presented appropriate data on pain intensity. The proportion of people with an unfavourable long-term pain outcome in studies ranged from about 7% to 23% after hip and 10% to 34% after knee replacement. In the best quality studies, an unfavourable pain outcome was reported in 9% or more of patients after hip and about 20% of patients after knee replacement. Limitations Other studies reported mean values of pain outcomes. These and routine clinical studies are potential sources of relevant data. Conclusions and implications of key findings After hip and knee replacement, a significant proportion of people have painful joints. There is an urgent need to improve general awareness of this possibility and to address determinants of good and bad outcomes.

https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/bmjopen/2/1/e000435.full.pdf

What proportion of patients report long-term pain after total hip or knee replacement for osteoarthritis? A systematic review of prospective studies in unselected patients

We used data from a large tertiary academic medical center involving 197,961 admissions and 176,696 nursing shifts of 8 hours each in 43 hospital units to examine the association between mortality and patient exposure to nursing shifts during which staffing by RNs was 8 hours or more below the staffing target. We also examined the association between mortality and high patient turnover owing to admissions, transfers, and discharges. We used Cox proportional-hazards models in the analyses with adjustment for characteristics of patients and hospital units. Results Staffing by RNs was within 8 hours of the target level for 84% of shifts, and patient turnover was within 1 SD of the day-shift mean for 93% of shifts. Overall mortality was 61% of the expected rate for similar patients on the basis of modified diagnosisrelated groups. There was a significant association between increased mortality and increased exposure to unit shifts during which staffing by RNs was 8 hours or more below the target level (hazard ratio per shift 8 hours or more below target, 1.02; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.01 to 1.03; P<0.001). The association between increased mortality and high patient turnover was also significant (hazard ratio per high-turnover shift, 1.04; 95% CI, 1.02 to 1.06; P<0.001). Conclusions In this retrospective observational study, staffing of RNs below target levels was associated with increased mortality, which reinforces the need to match staffing with patients’ needs for nursing care. (Funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.)

https://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJMsa1001025

Nurse Staffing and Inpatient Hospital Mortality

Despite criticism of patient-satisfaction measures, patient-experience surveys that are designed and administered appropriately provide robust measures of the quality of health care and offer insight into a dimension that's otherwise difficult to measure objectively.

http://www3.med.unipmn.it/intranet/papers/2013/NEJM/2013-01-17_nejm/nejmp1211775.pdf

The Patient Experience and Health Outcomes

Job dissatisfaction among nurses contributes to costly labor disputes, turnover, and risk to patients. Examining survey data from 95,499 nurses, we found much higher job dissatisfaction and burnout among nurses who were directly caring for patients in hospitals and nursing homes than among nurses working in other jobs or settings, such as the pharmaceutical industry. Strikingly, nurses are particularly dissatisfied with their health benefits, which highlights the need for a benefits review to make nurses’ benefits more comparable to those of other white-collar employees. Patient satisfaction levels are lower in hospitals with more nurses who are dissatisfied or burned out—a finding that signals problems with quality of care. Improving nurses’ working conditions may improve both nurses’ and patients’ satisfaction as well as the quality of care.

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Nurses’ Widespread Job Dissatisfaction, Burnout, And Frustration With Health Benefits Signal Problems For Patient Care

BACKGROUND Patients' perceptions of their care, especially in the hospital setting, are not well known. Data from the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey provide a portrait of patients' experiences in U.S. hospitals. METHODS We assessed the performance of hospitals across multiple domains of patients' experiences. We examined whether key characteristics of hospitals that are thought to enhance patients' experiences (i.e., a high ratio of nurses to patient-days, for-profit status, and nonacademic status) were associated with a better experience for patients. We also examined whether a hospital's performance on the HCAHPS survey was related to its performance on indicators of the quality of clinical care. RESULTS We found moderately high levels of satisfaction with care (e.g., on average, 67.4% of a hospital's patients said that they would definitely recommend the hospital), with a high degree of correlation among the measures of patients' experiences (Cronbach's alpha, 0.94). As compared with hospitals in the bottom quartile of the ratio of nurses to patient-days, those in the top quartile had a somewhat better performance on the HCAHPS survey (e.g., 63.5% vs. 70.2% of patients responded that they "would definitely recommend" the hospital; P<0.001). Hospitals with a high level of patient satisfaction provided clinical care that was somewhat higher in quality for all conditions examined. For example, those in the top quartile of HCAHPS ratings performed better than those in the bottom quartile with respect to the care that patients received for acute myocardial infarction (actions taken to provide appropriate care as a proportion of all opportunities for providing such actions, 95.8% vs. 93.1% in unadjusted analyses; P<0.001) and for pneumonia (90.5% vs. 88.6% in unadjusted analyses, P<0.001). CONCLUSIONS This portrait of patients' experiences in U.S. hospitals offers insights into areas that need improvement, suggests that the same characteristics of hospitals that lead to high nurse-staffing levels may be associated with better experiences for patients, and offers evidence that hospitals can provide both a high quality of clinical care and a good experience for the patient.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJMsa0804116

Patients' Perception of Hospital Care in the United States

Background The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) launched the Bundled Payments for Care Improvement (BPCI) initiative in 2013. A subsequent study showed that the initiativ...

/pdf/evaluation-of-medicare-s-bundled-payments-initiative-for-hx7oozwpgt.pdf

Evaluation of Medicare’s Bundled Payments Initiative for Medical Conditions

The site of care may play an important role in health care disparities. We examined the 5 percent of U.S. hospitals with the highest proportion of elderly Hispanic patients and found that these hospitals cared for more than half of elderly Hispanics. These hospitals were more often for-profit, with higher rates of Medicaid patients and low nurse-staffing levels. They also provided a modestly lower quality of care for common medical conditions. Our finding that care for Hispanics is concentrated among a small number of hospitals provides an opportunity for targeted efforts to improve care for this group of Americans.

https://hoboken411.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/hoboken-hispanic-pdf-humc.pdf

The Characteristics And Performance Of Hospitals That Care For Elderly Hispanic Americans

Purpose
Recent reports have emphasized the importance of delivery systems in improving health care quality. However, few prior studies have assessed differences in primary care quality between physician groups that differ in size and organizational configuration. We examined whether larger physician group size and affiliation with networks of multiple groups are associated with higher quality of care.

/pdf/does-affiliation-of-physician-groups-with-one-another-p5hfwip5ku.pdf

Does Affiliation of Physician Groups with One Another Produce Higher Quality Primary Care

Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate whether the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program, a national program that introduced financial penalties for high readmission rates for certain medical conditions, had a “spillover” effect on surgical conditions. Summary Background Data: During the past decade, there have been multiple national efforts to improve surgical care. Readmission rates are a key metric for assessing surgical quality. Whether surgical readmission rates have declined, and whether the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program has had an influence is unclear. Methods: Using national Medicare data, we identified patients undergoing a range of procedures during the past decade. We examined whether certain procedures that would be targeted by the HRRP had a differential change in readmissions compared to other procedures. We used an interrupted time-series model to examine readmission trends in three time periods: pre-ACA, HRRP implementation, and HRRP penalty. Results: Between 2005 and 2014, 17,423,106 patients underwent the procedures of interest; risk-adjusted rates of readmission across the 8 procedures declined from 12.2% to 8.6%. Pre-ACA rates of readmission were decreasing [−0.060% per quarter (−0.072%, −0.048%), P < 0.001]. During the HRRP implementation period, the rate of decline of readmissions increased [−0.129% (−0.142%, −0.116%), P < 0.001] and continued declining at a similar rate during the penalty period [−0.118% (−0.131%, −0.105%), P < 0.001]. Largest declines in surgical readmissions were seen among the nontargeted procedures. The hospitals with the greatest reductions in medical readmissions also had the greatest drop in surgical readmissions. Conclusions: Surgical readmission rates have fallen during the past decade and rates of decline have increased during the HRRP period.

/pdf/national-trends-in-readmission-following-inpatient-surgery-23f3c7kti1.pdf

Jie Zheng

Papers

Patients' Perception of Hospital Care in the United States

Evaluation of Medicare’s Bundled Payments Initiative for Medical Conditions

The Characteristics And Performance Of Hospitals That Care For Elderly Hispanic Americans

Does Affiliation of Physician Groups with One Another Produce Higher Quality Primary Care

National Trends in Readmission Following Inpatient Surgery in the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program Era