The effect of patient quality measurements and HCAHPS patient satisfaction on hospital reimbursements

BACKGROUND: The Centers of Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) links hospital reimbursements to quality metrics. Likewise, the Hospital Value-Based Purchasing (VBP) program offers financial incentives to acute-care hospitals based on performance improvements on several quality measures included in the national Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey. A research gap exists with regard to assessing the effectiveness of VBP incentives on improving the patient’s quality of care. OBJECTIVE: This study is to determine whether hospitals which reported better patient quality metrics and lower frequency of pressure sores received higher reimbursements. METHODS: The data were retrieved from the CMS Care Compare website utilizing matched data from 2297 US hospitals. Information on HCAHPS, the VBP Program in Patient Safety Index, and Reimbursements was obtained for this study. Partial Least Square (PLS) was utilized thru SmartPLS 3.0 to test the hypotheses. RESULTS: The results did not reveal any financial penalties when hospitals reported lower patient quality outcomes and increased numbers of pressure sores. However, lower patient quality measures were associated with lower patient satisfaction. Controversially, lower patient satisfaction scores were associated with higher reimbursement rates overall. CONCLUSIONS: The main contribution of this study reveals that the effectiveness of value-based reimbursements and the concept of continuous improvement is constrained due to the lack of unified measurement objectives across US healthcare institutions.