A tighter and more targeted Victorian Healthcare Experience Survey program is helping drive reforms in patient communication and care in Victoria’s public health services.
Data collection for the VHES program relaunched at the end of 2021 with shorter surveys, questions better targeted to patient and health service needs and a shift to mainly electronic data collection. The Adult Inpatient, Adult Emergency and Maternity surveys where the first to be refreshed and released with several further surveys resuming collection during 2022.
Andrea Floyd is the Director Quality and Risk at Mildura Base Public Hospital (MBPH) and has been involved in the VHES program for many years at both MBPH and in her previous role at Bendigo Health.
Ms Floyd says she has always used VHES data in her roles, such as forwarding data around staff response times to the hospital’s falls governing committee to monitor impact on patient falls rates.
She admits that she was a little sceptical about the impact of the new style and questions following the refresh of the program during 2021, but says the benefits have been clear since the relaunch.
“What I'm finding about the new questions is they are much more actionable,” she said. “It’s much easier to use the VHES data to go back to our staff and say ‘This is how our patients and our community have responded to this question and here is where we need to improve’, the new questions provide a much better link for us to drive positive change.”
Ms Floyd says improving communication with patients and ensuring they feel involved in decisions around their health care are two key priorities for Mildura Base, which transitioned from private to public management in September 2020.
“I would say unless you've got good communication between staff and patients, you don't actually know whether you've provided the care somebody needs,” she said. “We can provide the medical care somebody needs, or we think they need, but we've got no guarantees that the patient will continue and follow through with that unless they understand the information we provide.”
“So, when we look at how people are engaged in conversations about their healthcare, [the key VHES questions are] 'did staff explain things in a way you could understand?’ and ‘were you involved as much as you wanted to be in making decisions about your care?’.”
Ms Floyd said the responses to these questions have helped start conversations with staff about the way they are engaging patients in their care and laid the groundwork for further development.
“We are now looking to move more to a formalised teach back method so staff can be assured our patients are engaged in important conversations and understand their healthcare and treatment.”
The VHES program is run by VAHI’s consumer experience team, who are always on the lookout for examples of how the new survey and regular sharing of results are improving patient centred care. If you’ve got a story to share about the impact of the new VHES in your health service, you can get in touch with team via [email protected]. We would love to hear from you.