A Monmouth Medical Center quality improvement study that drove dramatic improvement in hospitalized patients’ satisfaction with physician communication was recently honored at a national American College of Physicians meeting.
The study, titled “HCAHPS: Having Constant Communication Augments Hospital and Patient Satisfaction,” was honored as one of 20 winners among more than 4,000 entries in the national abstract competitions during Internal Medicine Meeting 2022, ACP’s annual scientific meeting held this spring in Chicago.
Winners on site in Chicago to present their winning abstracts at the podium included MMC internal medicine resident physician Dr. Raghu Tiperneni. She explains that the purpose of the study, which included all adult patients that were admitted to inpatient non-ICU medical units between Jan. 1 and June 30, 2021, was to orient house staff, nurses and attending physicians on medical services on the “AIDET” approach, which is designed to keep patients informed and make them feel heard.
“AIDET stands for the five key communication behaviors that create positive care interactions: acknowledge, introduce, duration, explanation and thank you,” Tipereni said. “Additional afternoon hospital rounds were implemented to summarize the plan and discuss updates occurring throughout the day to enhance doctor-patient communication.”
Data analysis was done by HCAHPS domain scores for “Communication with Doctors.” The HCAHPS, or Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems, survey, which encompasses 10 domains each with 29 questions addressing interpersonal, medical and environmental elements of patient care, was developed by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in partnership with the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality in 2006. Since then, it has become a standardized instrument to measure hospitalized patients’ perception of care.
A regional teaching campus of Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, Monmouth Medical Center ranks 29th among the 50 best major teaching hospitals in the U.S., according to Washington Monthly.
