Hospital Cleaning Services & Their Role In Patient Trust

When individuals seek medical care, from the routine to the serious to the critical, they place a great deal of trust in the medical facility and the health care providers that staff it. Whether your facility appears clean can have a tremendous impact on how patients and their families view your overall professionalism and levels of care. Medical cleaning not only impacts patient perception, it can have a significant role in reducing the risk of disease transmission and even Hospital Acquired Infections (HAIs). Healthcare cleaning is a critical component of both preventing subsequent infection and illness, and creating patient and family trust in medical facilities. These elements in turn can have a real impact on Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) scores. Is your current medical cleaning company delivering a level of service that protects patients, your facility’s reputation and gives you the best chance to score high on HCAHPS?

HCAHPS Data & What Patients Say

As you likely know, HCAHPS is an essential tool to gather feedback from patients regarding their overall experience in the hospital. This data allows other individuals to assess different health care facilities when planning and choosing their medical care. Prospective patients and their families take the HCAHPS information seriously because it comes from the direct experiences of other patients. The HCAHPS survey questions patients about ten key areas of treatment, service and stay. What questions are patients asked to consider? Patients are asked how frequently and well doctors and nursing staff communicated with the patient. They are questioned about how quickly staff responded to their needs. They are asked if their pain was adequately controlled and whether medications administered to them were clearly explained. Patients are also queried about how quiet their rooms were at night. Likewise, they were asked about whether or not they were given sufficient information about what to do during their recovery at home. These HCAHPS questions do not really relate to the overall cleanliness of your facility, but the following do. How often patients’ rooms and bathrooms were kept clean? How do patients rate the hospital? And, would patients recommend the hospital to friends and family?  If your facilities struck the patient as less than clean, they might very well rate you low on all of those three markers.

HCAHPS Scores & Your Hospital Cleaning Company

Strong HCAHPS scores are reliant on a variety of service measures, only some impacted by the overall condition of your facility. But your healthcare cleaning service can have a significant positive impact on a few of these areas. These three patient questions can benefit from strong and effective medical cleaning companies:

• How often patients’ rooms and bathrooms were kept clean?
• How do patients rate the hospital?
• Would patients recommend the hospital to friends and family?  

Patients and their families will assess their general care in part based upon their sense of the overall state of your medical facility. If your patients perceive your hospital as anything less than ‘very clean’ and well maintained, it can impact their overall view of everything from the professionalism of your staff to the quality of their care. Think about it, would you suggest a health care facility to someone you know and care about if it failed to meet basic patient requirements like a sanitary room and bathroom? So much of patient satisfaction is linked to just their impression of their care and surroundings. Things like mystery stains on bathroom walls or dirty vinyl baseboards can immediately hurt the overall impression patients have of the complete litany of services. This in turn can actually lower HCAHPS scores in areas you really should be doing very well in.

Positive HCAHPS Scores & Profitability

When outsourcing your medical cleaning service, it is imperative you get it right. Not only can subpar medical cleaning actually hurt people, it can lead to a drop in important business metrics like profit. Did you know that the cleanliness of your hospital and the overall perception of patients are directly linked to your bottom line? In fact Press Ganey, a patient experience company in Indiana that partners with more than 50% of all U.S. hospitals to help improve clinical and business outcomes, reported that the top 25% of U.S. hospitals with the highest scores on the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems were also the most profitable. So a clean medical facility has a number of important benefits from patient perception, employee satisfaction and even profitability.

At Stathakis, we provide hospital cleaning services, medical cleaning services, medical office cleaning services and more to the businesses of Southeast Michigan. We are an  ISSA CIMS-GB certified building services company and have been providing business cleaning services for over 35 years. CIMS assures our customers that our processes are among the industry's best. Not only do we follow industry best practices, we set them. If you are looking to outsource your healthcare cleaning or need to upgrade your current medical office cleaning, please contact us to speak with a member of our team to get your questions answered and see if we might be able to help you and your facility shine.