Compassion Practices and HCAHPS: Does Rewarding and Supporting Workplace Compassion Influence Patient Perceptions?

Abstract

Objective To examine the benefits of compassion practices on two indicators of patient perceptions of care quality—the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and systems (HCAHPS) overall hospital rating and likelihood of recommending. Study Setting Two hundred sixty‐nine nonfederal acute care U.S. hospitals. Study Design Cross‐sectional study. Data Collection Surveys collected from top‐level hospital executives. Publicly reported HCAHPS data from October 2012 release. Principal Findings Compassion practices, a measure of the extent to which a hospital rewards compassionate acts and compassionately supports its employees (e.g., compassionate employee awards, pastoral care for employees), is significantly and positively associated with hospital ratings and likelihood of recommending. Conclusions Our findings illustrate the benefits for patients of specific and actionable organizational practices that provide and reinforce compassion.

Measuring Compassion in Healthcare: A Comprehensive and Critical Review

“…Our research identified one instrument that was developed to measure compassion as an emotion in healthcare providers [35,36], three instruments that were created to measure healthcare providers' ability to provide compassionate care [34,37,38], one study that measured compassion in association with the patient care experience [39] and three studies that evaluated compassion as indicators of educator instructional performance and quality, or as attributes in residents, fellows and medical/nursing students [40][41][42]. While we report on several measures of compassion, each is associated with significant limitations that warrant careful consideration.…”

“…Four studies described patient-report instruments to examine the importance of physician and nurse compassion in different patient populations [35][36][37][38]. One study that measured organizational support for compassionate care was also included [39]. Three studies measured compassion in educational institutions, either as indicators of educator instructional performance and quality, or as attributes in residents, fellows or medical/nursing students [40][41][42].…”

“…McClelland and Vogus [39] developed a compassion practices scale to evaluate the extent to which a hospital uses award programs to recognize acts of caring shown by employees'…”

“…perceptions of quality of care [39]. McClelland and Vogus [39] used a compassion practices scale to identify the effects of facilitators of and barriers to compassionate acts on the ability of healthcare providers to extend compassionate behavior to patients and their relatives.…”

Hospital Advertising, Competition, and HCAHPS: Does It Pay to Advertise?

“…HCAHPS performance, the return on these projects' investments is readily calculated (e.g., Weech-Maldonado et al 2012;Merlino and Raman 2013;Petrullo et al 2013;McClelland and Vogus 2014).…”