Patient experience of hospital care in China: major findings from the Chinese Patient Experience Questionnaire Survey (2016-2018).

OBJECTIVES: China launched the National Healthcare Improvement Initiative (NHII) in 2015 to improve patient experiences in healthcare. This study aimed to generate evidence of hospital care quality from the patients' perspective. DESIGN: This nationwide cross-sectional study interviewed participants from 31 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions across China. SETTING: A total of 117 tertiary hospitals in mainland China. PARTICIPANTS: 48 422 responses from outpatients and 35 957 responses from inpatients were included in this study. PRIMARY OUTCOME MEASURE: The scores of six predefined domains in the Chinese Patient Experience Questionnaire, five of which were designed to reflect specific dimensions of care, and one of which indicated the overall rating. RESULTS: More than 80% of the respondents viewed their care experiences as positive. The NHII seems to have had a positive impact, as indicated by the steady, although unremarkable, increase in the patient experience scores over the 2016-2018 period. The Chinese patients generally reported a positive experience with the clinical aspects of care, but reported a less positive experience with the environmental, interpersonal and social services aspects of care. The institutional factors, including region and type of hospital, and personal factors, such as gender, age, education and occupation, were factors affecting the patient experience in China. Humanistic care was the aspect of care with the greatest association with the overall patient experience rating in both the outpatient and inpatient settings. CONCLUSIONS: The national survey indicated an overall positive patient perspective of care in China. Older age, higher education level and formal employment status were found to be correlated with positive care experiences, as were higher levels of economic development of the region, a more generous insurance benefits package and a higher degree of coordinated care. The interpersonal-related initiatives had substantial roles in the improvement of the patient experience. In the regions where farmers and users of traditional Chinese medicine services constitute a greater proportion of the population, improvement of patient experiences for these groups deserves special policy attention.

Segmentation of High-Cost Adults in an Integrated Healthcare System Based on Empirical Clustering of Acute and Chronic Conditions.

BACKGROUND: High-cost patients are a frequent focus of improvement projects based on primary care and other settings. Efforts to characterize high-cost, high-need patients are needed to inform care planning, but such efforts often rely on a priori assumptions, masking underlying complexities of a heterogenous population. OBJECTIVE: To define recognizable subgroups of patients among high-cost adults based on clinical conditions, and describe their survival and future spending. DESIGN: Retrospective observational cohort study. PARTICIPANTS: Within a large integrated delivery system with 2.7 million adult members, we selected the top 1% of continuously enrolled adults with respect to total healthcare expenditures during 2010. MAIN MEASURES: We used latent class analysis to identify clusters of alike patients based on 53 hierarchical condition categories. Prognosis as measured by healthcare spending and survival was assessed through 2014 for the resulting classes of patients. RESULTS: Among 21,183 high-cost adults, seven clinically distinctive subgroups of patients emerged. Classes included end-stage renal disease (12% of high-cost population), cardiopulmonary conditions (17%), diabetes with multiple comorbidities (8%), acute illness superimposed on chronic conditions (11%), conditions requiring highly specialized care (14%), neurologic and catastrophic conditions (5%), and patients with few comorbidities (the largest class, 33%). Over 4 years of follow-up, 6566 (31%) patients died, and survival in the classes ranged from 43 to 88%. Spending regressed to the mean in all classes except the ESRD and diabetes with multiple comorbidities groups. CONCLUSIONS: Data-driven characterization of high-cost adults yielded clinically intuitive classes that were associated with survival and reflected markedly different healthcare needs. Relatively few high-cost patients remain persistently high cost over 4 years. Our results suggest that high-cost patients, while not a monolithic group, can be segmented into few subgroups. These subgroups may be the focus of future work to understand appropriateness of care and design interventions accordingly.

Defining attributes of patient safety through a concept analysis.

AIM: The aim of this study was to report an analysis of the concept of patient safety. BACKGROUND: Despite recent increase in the number of work being done to clarify the concept and standardize measurement of patient safety, there are still huge variations in how the term is conceptualized and how to measure patient safety data across various healthcare settings and in research. DESIGN: Concept analysis. DATA SOURCES: A literature search was conducted through PubMed and Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature, Plus using the terms 'patient safety' in the title and 'concept analysis,' 'attributes' or 'definition' in the title and or abstract. All English language literature published between 2002-2014 were considered for the review. METHODS: Walker and Avant's method guided this analysis. RESULTS: The defining attributes of patient safety include prevention of medical errors and avoidable adverse events, protection of patients from harm or injury and collaborative efforts by individual healthcare providers and a strong, well-integrated healthcare system. The application of Collaborative Alliance of Nursing Outcomes indicators as empirical referents would facilitate the measurement of patient safety. CONCLUSION: With the knowledge gained from this analysis, nurses may improve patient surveillance efforts that identify potential hazards before they become adverse events and have a stronger voice in health policy decision-making that influence implementation efforts aimed at promoting patient safety, worldwide. Further studies are needed on development of a conceptual model and framework that can aid with collection and measurement of standardized patient safety data.