The Gallup Organization has studied the quality of patient care for more than 30 years. This wealth of measurement and consulting experience has enabled us to develop a new scientific methodology and data collection system to measure and report the patient care experience in "real time" for healthcare organization leaders -- Gallup's Patient Quality System (PQS).
The concept behind the PQS is simple: Every patient has a voice in the quality of care he or she receives, every time that person receives it.
Why is the PQS important? Every day, it becomes more obvious that excellent clinical outcomes alone do not increase the likelihood of a patient or their family to return or recommend a hospital's services to friends and family. Great care goes beyond a strict interpretation of clinical performance, and moves more to the complicated series of human connections between staff and patients. Simply put, improving the quality and frequency of human interactions improves healing.
The PQS captures continuous quantitative and qualitative snapshots of the patient care experience -- during the care experience, at the point of discharge, or after discharge -- and delivers results to hospital managers and staff the next day. This data can help hospital managers begin to understand the "why" behind their traditional scores and lead to real improvement of the care experience for every patient.
The PQS provides healthcare organization leaders with:
- Immediate staff reinforcement of positive patient care
- Increased staff engagement with organizational goals
- Improved clinical outcomes
- Heightened awareness of patient safety and service quality
- Reduced grievance filings and malpractice claims
- Immediate staff reinforcement of positive patient care
- Increased patient loyalty and organizational financial performance
Gallup research shows that increasing the frequency and quality of targeted patient feedback regarding safety and quality increases the long-term statistical measurement performance and reduces the likelihood of unnecessary legal action for perceived "medical errors" or low quality.
The PQS encompasses a robust combination of measurement and feedback, consulting, tracking, and business impact analysis to feed the cycle of care improvement. These factors work in concert to drive positive business and clinical outcomes for healthcare organizations. The PQS features:
- A standardized suggested questionnaire of core items, each of which correlate to patient loyalty and are portable across all care settings.
- The ability to customize the PQS to include optional custom question items to continue measurement unique to your organization, at the unit level if desired.
- The ability to "opt out" following the survey to speak with someone directly at the hospital - a key factor in service recovery, safety concerns, and problem resolution.
- Daily qualitative results (unit-specific patient comments) and weekly statistical results, driven to your management teams in an instantaneous manner to track staff recognition, business performance, process improvement, and care quality. These results are available at system, hospital, and unit levels for review, analysis, and performance improvement action planning.
- The availability of additional data packages, strategic consulting plans, and online learning designed to operate in an "active" mode with your organization.
For more information or a customized evaluation for your organization, contact the Healthcare team.
