With healthcare reform on the horizon, organizations are taking a close look at their current operations and investigating ways in which they can better position themselves for the truly transformative change that is around the corner.

One key area of opportunity for healthcare staffing providers lies within the Hospital Care Quality Information from the Consumer Perspective (HCAHPS) Survey, which provides a standardized way to measure patients’ perspectives on hospital care.

This 32-question survey is given to a random sample of adult patients between 48 hours and six weeks after discharge. It asks patients about nine key topics: communication with doctors, communication with nurses, responsiveness of hospital staff, pain management, communication about medicines, discharge information, cleanliness of the hospital environment, quietness of the hospital environment, and transition of care.

The survey asks patients if they would recommend the hospital to their family and friends, so the answers are extremely important and carry a great deal of weight, especially as we continue to see an increase in consumer awareness and social transparency.

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Also, the Affordable Care Act has tied HCAHPS performance to the calculation of some types of payments made to hospitals, so these quality scores are critical to the hospitals that Medical Staffing Network serves.

It is important for all healthcare staffing providers and partners to make a shared commitment to working together to ensure that our clinical employees continue to provide the absolute highest quality patient care-from the moment their patients arrive, until they are discharged.

I speak on behalf of Medical Staffing Network when I say that our organization is committed to giving all our team members the tools, training and education they need so that they are able to provide the level of care that will make our client partners’ patients give their facilities the highest HCAHPS scores. I encourage our fellow peers to make the same commitment to our industry, and to the health and welfare of our communities and country.

The quality scores of our clients’ facilities are truly a reflection on the quality of service we provide as their healthcare staffing partners. Therefore, I take this opportunity to promote a shared commitment for providing the best patient care quality attainable. Thank you.

You can read more about HCAHPS here and see how the results are publicly reported here. Click here for a sample HCAHPS survey.

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