WASHINGTON, Sept. 19, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Hospitals and
health systems can discard three myths of employee engagement to
improve patient satisfaction and Medicare reimbursement and raise
their image for patient safety with well-designed initiatives,
according to the new report Data-Driven Insights for Your 2017
Employee Engagement Strategy, Advisory Board announced
today.
"The latest data from hospitals working with Advisory Board on
employee engagement show that institutions can throw away three
traditional excuses for middling or lagging performance," said
Sarah Rothenberger, Managing
Director, Advisory Board Survey Solutions. "Improvement is possible
from any starting point, and higher employee engagement correlates
with stronger performance on patient satisfaction and culture of
safety measures at the organization level."
The news is timely. "As hospitals and health systems undergo
large change management initiatives around transitioning to
value-based care and reducing unnecessary care variation, they
should not overlook the role of employee engagement," said
John Johnston, National Partner,
Consulting at Advisory Board. "The data show the steps every
organization can take to improve their own engagement and drive
successful care transformation."
How employee engagement influences hospital performance and
reimbursement
According to Advisory Board analysis, for
every 1% increase in engagement, hospitals saw a 0.33-point
improvement in Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers
and Systems (HCAHPS) overall hospital rating. HCAHPS scores can
impact hospitals' Medicare reimbursement by up to plus-or-minus 2%
and may influence patient decisions in choosing a provider. The
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services include HCAHPS in
facility scoring on the Hospital Compare website that patients may
consult in selecting providers.
Each 1% increase in engagement also correlated to a 0.41-point
gain in Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Culture
of Safety Patient Safety Grade, Advisory Board's analysis
showed.
Engagement also influences hospital employees' performance.
Engaged employees are 1.5 times more likely to receive top
performance ratings than content employees and three times more
likely to receive top performance ratings than disengaged
employees.
The retention cost opportunity is just as clear. Disengaged
staff are more than twice as likely as engaged staff to leave their
organization in the 12 months following an employee engagement
survey.
"Many health systems have been trying to address the critical
challenge of turnover to improve organizational performance and at
Parkview Health, one effective lever we have found is providing
managers with a comprehensive onboarding toolkit," said
Dena Jacquay, Chief Human Resources
Officer at Parkview Health, a health system based in Fort Wayne, Indiana, that was named an
Advisory Board Workplace of the Year for the second consecutive
year in 2017. "Managers have responded to the toolkit because it
gives them a significant head start. It also helps Parkview ensure
that key milestones are handled consistently across the
system."
What holds many hospitals and health systems back from realizing
the benefits of improved employee engagement?
Myth 1: Many hospitals face insurmountable barriers to
raising engagement
Hospitals should not assume that
traditional demographic factors render poor engagement inevitable.
For example, among organizations working with Advisory Board on
employee engagement, institutions with a union presence averaged
45% engagement versus 43% for institutions that had no union
presence. Facility type does show greater variation, with research
and cancer centers showing the greatest opportunity to improve
engagement.
Also, even strong performers can continue to improve. More than
44% of organizations starting above the mean engagement score
improved, compared to 68% of those starting below the mean.
Organizations that started with better-than-median employee
engagement and saw gains in engagement saw an average increase of
six percentage points.
Organizations that have already had an employee engagement
initiative in place for more than a year can continue to generate
sustained gains. Institutions beyond their first year of employee
engagement work with Advisory Board saw faster gains—and higher
overall engagement—than first-year organizations in 2016.
Myth 2: Hospitals should settle for engagement levels seen in
other industries
Hospitals and health systems have a
substantial engagement advantage over employers in other
industries. For the vast majority of health care institutions,
comparing to generic, multi-industry benchmarks will yield
lackluster goals because the health care workers are already more
than twice as engaged as employees in other industries. At the
other end of the scale, the level of disengagement in other
industries is three times that of the level within
healthcare. Organizations looking to create accurate,
ambitious goals should use healthcare-specific benchmarks down to
the nursing unit level.
What does effective employee engagement look like? The
75th percentile benchmark for hospitals working with
Advisory Board is nearly 50% employee engagement.
Myth 3: Some departments' engagement should be written off as
hopeless
The biggest opportunity to boost engagement lies in
targeting several of the largest clinical departments: laboratory,
surgery, and nursing. These three departments are perennially among
the least engaged groups. This need not be the case—other large,
clinical departments such as imaging and rehab tend to have higher
engagement levels. And several nursing unit types are outpacing the
overall employee engagement national benchmark.
Advisory Board's Survey Solutions data include responses from
more than 1 million respondents from hundreds of individual
hospitals. Members of the programs average a 10% annual improvement
in employee engagement. Hospitals and health system human resources
leaders can download the reports Data-Driven Insights for
Your 2017 Employee Engagement Strategy and The Manager's
Guide to Engaging Staff.
About Advisory Board
Advisory Board is a best
practices firm that uses a combination of research, technology, and
consulting to improve the performance of 4,400+ health care
organizations. As the health care business of The Advisory Board
Company (NASDAQ: ABCO), Advisory Board forges and finds the best
new ideas and proven practices from its network of thousands of
leaders, then customizes and hardwires them into every level of
member organizations, creating enduring value. For more
information, visit www.advisory.com.
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