Why Aren't the Blogging Hospital CEO's Blogging About HCAHPS?? #HCAHPS

According to the blog (http://runningahospital.blogspot.com/) that Paul Levy (President and CEO of Beth Isreal Deaconess Medical Center in Boston) publishes, there are six other hospital CEO's that write/publish blogs.

They are as follows:

• Bill Roper, CEO of Univ. of North Carolina Health Care System
• Bruce Bullen, CEO of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care
• Marty Bonick, CEO of Jewish Hospital in Louisville
• Rob Colones, CEO of McLeod Health in South Carolina
• Scott Kashman, CEO of St. Joseph Medical Center
• Tom Quinn, CEO of Community General Hospital in Syracuse
  

I would also add Todd Linden, CEO of Grinnell Regional Medical Center as a CEO blogger.

First off, I applaud these CEO's for taking the time to communicate their thoughts using a leading social media tool - blogs. These are excellent blogs that cover issues ranging from personal travel, staff events, health care reform, health care quality, new physicians, etc..etc.

Out of this list - only two of these CEO's blogged about their facility's #HCAHPS scores.

• Todd Linden at Grinnell Regional wrote about their #HCAHPS scores (http://toddlinden.blogspot.com/2009/02/numbers-are-in-and-winners-are-patients.html) in his February 5, 2009 blog entry Todd states that "GRMC is at the head of the class in almost every category of patient satisfaction for hospitals within a 60-mile radius including the urban hospitals in Des Moines, Cedar Rapids and Iowa City!" This was followed by a celebration of their "#HCAHPS success" with "hot cocoa and warm cookies to recognize their dedication".
• Tom Quinn at Community General Hospital wrote about their #HCAHPS scores in his blog on April 19, 2008. In this posting he compared his facility to the four other Syracuse hospitals on the first five of ten #HCAHPS questions for the survey period of Oct 2006-Jun 2007. Though Tom did not comment or report data regarding the "would you recommend to friends/family" question.

In Tom Quinn's blog, he states that "CMS will update the patient scores on its website each quarter. We as an industry - and we as an individual hospital - have more to do to improve the percentage of patients who say we "always" meet their needs".

Borrowing Tom's words - we "have more to do to improve" our communication of our #HCAHPS scores to our patients, employees, medical staff, and communities. The mere fact that only 7 of over 5,700 hospital CEO's have blogs is big issue in transparency and communication - coupled with the fact that the ones that are blogging are NOT consistently talking about patient satisfaction and #HCAHPS scores.

Again, we cannot sit back and wait for Consumer Report or our local press folks to use OUR #HCAHPS scores to report who is doing well and who is not doing well. Nor should we expect our patients, employees, medical staff, and communities to navigate the hospital compare website to find our #HCAHPS scores and draw their own conclusions. This is our job! We need to be communicating these out on a regular basis. The drum that I keep beating on this topic is that social media tools are the perfect solution for broadcasting, informing, and educating our folks about our #HCAHPS scores.