Home Health & Hospice Week

Do you have unprotected PHI going out in your mail?

Value-Based Purchasing, 5-Star ratings on Medicare Compare sites, and managed care contracting negotiations are just a few of the many reasons that your patients’ satisfaction is more important than ever. But you need to make sure your strategies to boost satisfaction scores stay on the right side of HIPAA.

There are many different avenues available to garner critical patient satisfaction data — a checkbox on admission paperwork asking where the patient discovered your agency, a link on your website or social media pages that links directly to your organization, and more.

Reminder: Whichever route you go to compile that precious data, make sure you and your staff keep your patient communications HIPAA-compliant. That goes for CAHPS data collection, too.

Sometimes it can be difficult to collect patient feedback in the home care setting. But gathering “real-time data that helps a manager or supervisor make changes to communication or workflow,” explains consultant Deborah Walker Keegan of Medical Practice Dimensions Inc. in the Asheville, N.C., area. That can improve patient satisfaction in the process.

Acknowledge Patients

Never miss the opportunity to reach out to your patients with thank you notes, texts, emails, or phone calls to acknowledge your appreciation for their business and loyalty. Don’t forget that grateful patients often become your most steadfast advocates.

Watch the PHI: Postcards, text updates, and phone messages often skirt the HIPAA compliance line, depending on the interaction. Texting electronic Protected Health Information (ePHI) can be a tricky business, too. Likewise with phone messages left on answering machines or with individuals or businesses not noted on a patient’s acceptable call list.

Thank you notes are a great idea to reinforce your appreciation of patients’ loyalty, but be sure that the envelope is sealed. Postcards are cheaper, but the safety and security of your patients must come first.

Case in point: Earlier this year, the Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services (OMHAS) mailed out survey postcards to its patients requesting feedback on its services.

OMHAS sent out these surveys annually to solicit feedback from its patients who’ve sought addiction or mental health treatment.

In fact, OMHAS mailed out two different satisfaction surveys, which displayed patient names and addresses, as well as a request to participate in the survey regarding the services they received through OMHAS, local news outlet WDTN reported. OMHAS didn’t place these postcards in sealed envelopes, so anyone could see the PHI on the postcards.

OMHAS Director Tracy Plouck issued an apology for the breach and stated that OMHAS was conducting “a thorough review of its internal processes and policies relating to consumer outreach and data use to assure better oversight and protection of health information, including additional training for all department staff members.”

Consider These Other Options

There are many ways aside from CAHPS surveys to discover your patients’ attitudes about the quality of the care you give. After all, that feedback can be applied to making adjustments in your agency that will increase revenue in the future.

Here are four ideas beyond your basic survey to help assess your patients’ reactions:

• Maintain a social media presence that addresses practice concerns and to-dos.
• Send out a monthly newsletter highlighting new technologies and services with options for questions through a linked patient portal.
• Use a medical secret shopper service to shop your agency.
• Coordinate a monthly patient focus group that targets ways to improve your practice.

Reminder: Ask every patient for feedback, and thank them for their reviews. Statistics show that patients rarely leave reviews, so it is vital to ask them frequently while remembering to follow-up with a thank you to show them that the agency values both their insight and their patronage.