Patient Satisfaction

Creating An Exceptional Experience For Each Patient

Patient Satisfaction

At Klickitat Valley Health, our commitment to meet or exceed expectations and create an exceptional experience for the patient and their family is our top priority. To monitor achievement of this goal, KVH measures patient satisfaction using various techniques.

To measure the satisfaction of patients care for as inpatients, KVH contracts with an independent, private market research company - Press Ganey - which contacts patients who receive care from Klickitat Valley Health on a monthly basis and reports those findings to our Department of Quality and Risk. Those reports are reviewed by Senior Leadership.

Over the past few years the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) have been working toward developing a standardized instrument to evaluate hospital quality as part of their Hospital Quality Initiative (HQI). The instrument that is now being used is known as the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems, or HCAHPS.

Measuring Hospital Quality

The intent of HCAHPS is to introduce a standardized survey instrument and data collection methodology for measuring and publicly reporting patients’ perspectives of hospital care. While many hospitals collect information on patient satisfaction, until the HCAHPS initiative there has been no national standard for collecting or publicly reporting information that would allow valid comparisons to be made across hospitals.

Three broad goals have shaped HCAHPS

The survey is is designed to produce data on patients’ perspectives of care that allow for objective and meaningful comparison of hospitals on topics that are important to consumers.

  • Public reporting of the survey results is designed to create incentives for hospitals to improve quality of care.
  • Public reporting will serve to enhance public accountability in healthcare by increasing the transparency of the quality of hospital care provided.

With these goals in mind, the HCAHPS project has taken substantial steps to assure that the survey will be used for credible, useful and practical.

The HCAHPS has been in active use since October 2006 and participation is voluntary.

For more information on the CMS Hospital Quality Initiative or HCAHPS, please visit the following websites: