The newly revamped Victorian Healthcare Experience Survey (VHES) program is driving collaboration and innovation to improve patient care and experience in Victoria’s public health services.
VHES data allows health services to benchmark their performance against both previous results and against peer group health services, highlighting successful approaches as well as areas of concern.
Patient Experience Manager Liz Cashill is responsible for community engagement and patient experience at the Royal Melbourne Hospital. She says VHES data provides a solid foundation for comparison and collaboration with similar health services.
“One of the things that is quite reassuring is that the group of tertiary metro [hospitals] tend to be relatively similar in terms of the measures, and we know that there are similar pressures being brought to bear on most of those tertiary Metro hospitals,” Ms Cashill said.
“The thing that is often interesting, is saying okay, what has our performance been like over time, is it dropping over time? If that's happening, is that what's happening with other peers? Or is there somebody who is all sudden doing incredibly well in one area?
“I'm also part of the patient experience network at a statewide level. So often we can as a group look at some of that data just to see who's doing really well on this, who's not doing so well? What might those factors be?
“Generally, it's used as a positive comparator to say ‘we're doing this and this seems to be reflecting well in terms of our patient experience data’.”
The VHES has become a critical part of a broad suite of patient experience monitoring measures used at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, which includes an internal survey sent immediately after discharge and performance monitoring apps for quality managers.
“We have just done a review of our person-centred care key performance indicators with consumers, and the indicators are now composed almost exclusively of VHES [data], and a couple of our own internal patient experience measures.”
Ms Cashill said that as well as highlighting areas that need improvement, the VHES allows her health service to monitor the effectiveness of changes made to address those issues.
“For us, one of those areas is around the provision of discharge information. Two years ago, we implemented an electronic medical record within something called a Health Hub, so a patient facing electronic portal. We are encouraging clinical teams to utilise the Health Hub to put instructions into a plain language after visit summary.
“And we're monitoring the impact that might have on our overall discharge information indicators within the VHES.”
This level of detailed monitoring has been made easier following the redesign of the VHES program, which focused strongly on producing actionable data right down to hospital ward level.
“It would be fair to say there's been some cynicism about, you know, external surveys of this nature and some criticism of methodology and response numbers.
“One of the things we've been heavily promoting is the redesign of the VHES last year, and particularly emphasizing the consumer engagement that was part of that process.
“Now what we're able to say to clinicians is that the program has been completely redesigned. There are less questions…and there's a focus on actionable data.
“So confidence in VHES is increasing as we see response numbers increasing. And the other thing that is obviously very helpful now is the ability to drill down to ward level, which was not there before with the previous VHES.”
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.