The HCAHPS sur­vey is designed to make patient per­cep­tion of hos­pi­tal stays into mea­sur­able data. The sur­vey con­tains 32 ques­tions in total about the patient’s hos­pi­tal expe­ri­ence, and 21 core ques­tions about the most crit­i­cal aspects of the expe­ri­ence. Patient answers to these ques­tions deter­mine a hospital’s HCAHPS results, which are weighed 30% in the deci­sion to award or with­hold 1% of Medicare reim­burse­ment.

Of all 32 HCAHPS ques­tions, and 21 core ques­tions, which are most rel­e­vant to a hospital’s Envi­ron­men­tal Ser­vices depart­ment? EVS per­for­mance impacts results of the ques­tions per­tain­ing to hos­pi­tal envi­ron­ment clean­li­ness and over­all hos­pi­tal impres­sion. Sur­vey recip­i­ents are asked these ques­tions:

Ques­tion 8: Dur­ing this hos­pi­tal stay, how often were your room and bath­room kept clean?

Ques­tion 18: Using any num­ber from 0 to 10, where 0 is the worst hos­pi­tal pos­si­ble and 10 is the best hos­pi­tal pos­si­ble, what num­ber would you use to rate this hos­pi­tal dur­ing your stay?

The Hospital Environment

The most rel­e­vant ques­tion to EVS in this cat­e­go­ry is:
8) Dur­ing this hos­pi­tal stay, how often were your room and bath­room kept clean?

This ques­tion is designed to mea­sure a patient’s visu­al per­cep­tion of clean­li­ness. Patients are able to answer this ques­tion with:

• 1 — Nev­er
• 2 — Some­times
• 3 — Usu­al­ly
• 4 — Always

The pres­ence of this ques­tion on the HCAHPS sur­vey indi­cates the need for an effi­cient and effec­tive EVS depart­ment. In order to achieve an opti­mal score of 4, patient rooms must con­sis­tent­ly meet high stan­dards of clean­ing qual­i­ty.

Overall Hospital Impression

The most impor­tant ques­tion to EVS in this cat­e­go­ry is:
18) Using any num­ber from 0 to 10, where 0 is the worst hos­pi­tal pos­si­ble and 10 is the best hos­pi­tal pos­si­ble, what num­ber would you use to rate this hos­pi­tal dur­ing your stay?

This ques­tion mea­sures the patient’s over­all per­cep­tion of the hos­pi­tal, encom­pass­ing every­thing from care and atten­tion from doc­tors and nurs­es to their per­cep­tion of the hos­pi­tal as a clean and safe envi­ron­ment.

Patients can respond to this ques­tion with any num­ber between 0 (worst hos­pi­tal ever) and 10 (best hos­pi­tal pos­si­ble).

The over­all impres­sion of the hos­pi­tal is large­ly impact­ed by clean­li­ness — every­thing from debris in the park­ing lot, to the lobby’s clean­li­ness, to over­flow­ing trash recep­ta­cles can neg­a­tive­ly affect a patient’s over­all per­cep­tion of qual­i­ty. Patients and vis­i­tors may not under­stand the com­plex­i­ties of the med­ical care they receive, but every­one under­stands “clean”.

This score is also affect­ed by the demeanor of the staff in the hos­pi­tal. The EVS staff is the sec­ond largest work­force in the hos­pi­tal. If EVS staff mem­bers are friend­ly, ask for per­mis­sion to enter rooms, and offer assis­tance, patients are more like­ly to remem­ber their vis­it as pos­i­tive. And on the oth­er side of the coin, EVS employ­ees who appear unhap­py or stressed, and avoid inter­act­ing with patients and vis­i­tors, will neg­a­tive­ly affect patient expe­ri­ence and their over­all qual­i­ty score.

In our next HCAHPS arti­cle, we’ll dis­cuss in detail how the envi­ron­men­tal ser­vices depart­ment can sup­port over­all hos­pi­tal qual­i­ty and pos­i­tive­ly affect HCAHPS scores with EVS soft­ware. Read it here: Role of EVS Soft­ware in Rais­ing HCAHPS Scores.

For more infor­ma­tion about the basics of HCAHPS, check out the first arti­cle in our series: HCAHPS: Just the Facts

Smart Facil­i­ty Soft­ware has EVS tools to bring trans­paren­cy to your depart­men­tal oper­a­tions and an effi­cient way to man­age for con­tin­u­ous improve­ment. Get start­ed with EVS Soft­ware today by com­plet­ing this form for a free online demo and per­son­al­ized tour of ES Opti­miz­er.