After complaints piled up about "Meatless Mondays" at Boston-based Brigham and Women's Faulkner Hospital, leaders pivoted to a new strategy: Removing the words "vegan" and "vegetarian" from the cafeteria's menu, NPR reported Aug. 11. 

NRC Health has identified 12 health systems, hospitals and medical groups that go above and beyond to provide excellence in patient experience, the healthcare data firm said Aug. 8.

CMS is making key changes to HCAHPS to modernize the survey and increase patient response rates, the agency said in its Hospital Inpatient Prospective Payment System final rule released Aug. 1. 

When we talk about patient experience, we often speak about our work to make our organizations more "patient- and family-centered." This reflects the reality of real structural and cultural barriers that inhibit our ability to put the patient at the center of all we do. 

NRC Health has identified 100 top-performing hospitals through its annual healthcare consumer-perception survey, the healthcare data firm said Aug. 8.

Healthcare organizations are experiencing lower levels of trust by patients, partly as a result of misaligned communications during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many healthcare leaders see the critical, timely need to regain that trust.

Community health providers play a crucial role in our society, providing quality healthcare that is inclusive and accessible to the communities they serve. To best meet their mission, they need a seamless business infrastructure that allows them to focus on the needs of their patients. That support system becomes even more crucial during stressed periods such as the pandemic and economic downturn.

With few exceptions, having to go to the hospital is not at the top of any individual's to-do list. However, long after the pain is gone and sutures have healed, patients remember how they were treated.

Some U.S. hospitals are embracing the idea of RV living for patients, families and staff members, providing on-site parking spaces and hookups for the vehicles, CBS News reported July 26.

The Ottawa Hospital and the Canadian Personalized Healthcare Innovation Network (CPHIN) are working together to build a health system that leverages data to empower collaboration and learning in support of delivering high-quality care at lower costs, while promoting the health of all Canadians. 

Use of comprehensive patient data in healthcare brings with it opportunities to transform clinical care. Nowhere is the potential greater than in precision medicine— which is using genomics to make medicine more precise and changing how care is delivered.

Linda Bosserman, M.D., joined City of Hope in Los Angeles nine years ago as a medical oncologist specializing in breast cancer and value-based care.

All members of the Cleveland Clinic team are referred to as "caregivers," because every employee should be focused on patients regardless of their position. In fact, part of every person's job is to help deliver the highest quality care and provide the best patient experience, Stephanie Bayer, senior director of patient experience at Cleveland Clinic, told Becker's.

Recently named to the No. 2 position on Newsweek's "2023 Best Hospitals" list, Cleveland Clinic leaders know full well that their efforts to constantly improve patient experience are always under a microscope.

While timely access to care is important when it comes to outcomes and patient satisfaction, findings from an April national survey released July 11 by the American Association of Nurse Practitioners show 40 percent of 1,029 respondents said they have experienced "longer than reasonable" wait times in hospitals and other healthcare facilities. This percentage increased over 2022 survey findings.

Hospital food has been the butt of jokes forever — at a significant cost to healthcare systems. Long after patients are discharged, they remember their poor experiences three meals a day, often just in time for the Press Ganey survey to arrive in their mailbox.

Although widely used in many other industries, online chat is just beginning to take off in healthcare. In fact, as healthcare leaders increasingly prioritize patient access, chat’s success in other businesses has spurred the rapid onboarding of chat solutions to help address healthcare-specific engagement and accessibility challenges.

All hospitals are focused on improving patient experience, a priority that has been proven to not only affect HCAHPS scores, Press Ganey survey ratings and CMS reimbursement policies, but also leads to improved quality and outcomes.

As a recently retired system chief nursing and quality officer, I am deeply passionate about championing nursing professionals as the backbone of healthcare delivery. Unfortunately, there is a pervasive threat that directly jeopardizes nurses’ ability to provide the highest quality care possible: workplace violence. With 44% of RNs reporting physical assault and 68% reporting verbal abuse according to the AHA, this mounting crisis must be addressed quickly and completely for the sake of caregiver wellbeing and organizational success at large.

At the close of 2021, I wrote that we were in a patient experience crisis. With the pandemic grinding on and omicron surges hitting most of us, the outlook was grim. My colleagues and I had never seen patient experience metrics drop so rapidly, and this development was a critical concern for the operations leadership and boards of many health systems. At the end of 2022, I wrote that, although some improvement had been seen, national indicators were still trending flat to negative.