Provider and Staff Responses to Non-Facility Specific Patient Experience Feedback with Post-Acute Care Transitions

While a large portion of efforts related to improving patient experience, reducing medical errors, and improving clinical outcomes have focused on acute care settings, improvements in the quality of post-acute care and patient experience with transitions from general acute care settings to post-acute levels of care are key to accomplishing population health goals. While patient experience surveys are utilized nationwide, there is evidence of a need for deliberate efforts to create and implement recommendations derived from analyzing patient experience data with healthcare staff and providers. In 2019, 14 focus group sessions were conducted with providers and staff, including nursing, pharmacy, therapy, and case management from skilled nursing facilities, long-term acute care hospitals, and inpatient rehabilitation facilities. To minimize bias while studying reactions to patient comments regarding care transitions, participants from different facilities were placed into groups together and provided de-identified patient comments to review and discuss key themes and potential solutions. Attribution, discourse, and summative content analyses were performed to identify the key themes. A framework was developed to understand provider and staff reactions to non-facility-specific patient experience feedback as well as recommendations for improving post-acute care transitions