Implementation Science and Research

30/30 Education Session - 30 minutes

3001 - The Patient Satisfaction vs. Patient Safety Conundrum

Primary Speaker(s)

• 

  Christine Greene, MPH, PhD

  Principal Research Investigator
  NSF International
  Linden, Michigan

  Nothing to disclose

Moderator(s)

• 

  Kathleen Gase, MBA, MPH, CIC, FAPIC

  Director Patient Safety & Quality
  Barnes-Jewish St. Peters & Progress West Hospitals
  St. Peters, Missouri

  Nothing to disclose

Despite extensive precautions and interventions championed by the IPC department, HAIs continue to persist. This session discusses how IP efforts can be strengthened by aligning IPC with a facility’s Environmental Services (EVS) department.
As with all hospital departments, EVS is rated on their scores from the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems Hospitals Surveys (HCAHPS), used to calculate value-based incentive payments in the Hospital Value-Based Purchasing program. This places pressure on EVS to have high HCAHPS scores, but the score does not reflect the expectation placed on EVS to minimize environmental contamination. Rather, it reflects metrics such as noise level and the patient perception of cleanliness. As a result, EVS staff are often forced to balance patient satisfaction against patient safety.

This session covers a case study wherein a facility conducted an ethnographic study to evaluate how EVS department processes can be improved to ensure outcomes that satisfy both patient satisfaction and patient safety needs. Participants will learn the ethnographic methods used, including direct observation, interviews and a formal survey to evaluate six key areas: job pressures, communication, job control, process consistency, attitudes and perceptions, and accountability.

This session will provide insight on how to address common issues faced by ES departments as they strive to satisfy the competing pressures of achieving high HCAHPS scores and minimizing environmental contamination. IPs and EVS staff will learn ways to improve accountability that concurrently serves to improve employee attitudes and perceptions. Common auditing mechanisms will be reviewed with suggestions on how to draw from the benefits of each to maximize accountability, cleanliness, and decontamination goals.

Learning Objectives:

• Describe approaches to align the Environmental Services department with Infection Prevention department efforts.
• Conduct measurable audits in combination with subjective outcome measurements for ensuring a visually clean and safe environment.
• Describe the purpose of an ethnography study and how can these methods be used to assess and improve department processes and culture.