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Abstract
The fact that a growing number of health care providers are hiring "Chief Experience Officers" or CXOs, shows how the patient experience is becoming a key element in hospital operations. Many health systems currently use the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) to gauge how inpatients perceive their hospital stay as their basis for understanding patient satisfaction. According to some industry experts, the inpatient journey should be broken down into distinct elements to identify the factors that can influence patient experience at each step of the journey. What Matters Most To determine which factors most strongly influence patient satisfaction, health systems must accurately understand the end-to-end inpatient journey, from pre-admission scheduling and testing through to follow-up care, as well as the role that price, service offerings, physician referrals, and brand play in determining where patients seek care.