It's no secret that employee engagement is key to a hospital's success, but a few myths could be hindering employee buy-in, goal-setting, and ultimately hospital quality and patient satisfaction, a new report by the Advisory Board said.
The report, Data-Driven Insights for Your 2017 Employee Engagement Strategy, highlights the idea that higher employee engagement is clearly tied to better performance on patient satisfaction and a "culture of safety measures at the organization level." Advisory Board's Survey Solutions data include responses from more than 1 million respondents from hundreds of individual hospitals. They said improvement is possible at any time and from any starting point, but shirking a few pre-conceived notions surrounding employee engagement comes first.
[Also: Study: Healthcare demands taking toll on physician health, patient care]
One myth is that hospitals should satisfy themselves with engagement levels prevalent in other industries. The report said in fact healthcare industry workers are twice as engaged compared to those in other industries, so comparing healthcare worker engagement metrics to "generic, multi-industry" ones will spawn mediocre goals.
"Organizations looking to create accurate, ambitious goals should use healthcare-specific benchmarks down to the nursing unit level," the report said.
[Also: Doctor shortage fuels aggressive recruiting of physicians out of residency, survey shows]
Another mistaken ideology is that there are certain barriers to improving employee engagement that are "insurmountable." Not true, the report said. Hospitals can buck traditional demographic factors. For instance, among their client organizations, institutions with a union presence averaged 45 percent engagement versus 43 percent for institutions that had no union presence. Facility type can influence engagement, as research and cancer centers showed the greatest opportunity to improve engagement, the Advisory Board said.
It is also important to remember that even those with strong employee engagement metrics can still make improvements. "Organizations that started with better-than-median employee engagement and saw gains in engagement saw an average increase of six percentage points," the Advisory Board said.
[Also: LifePoint names former Dignity Health executive CEO of 2 Texas hospitals]
Finally, there are no departments within a hospital that should ever be deemed "hopeless." Laboratory, surgery, and nursing trend perennially among the least engaged groups. Targeting these groups can help boost overall organization employee engagement metrics. Moreover, other large departments like imaging and rehab enjoy better numbers, so looking at their methods could be beneficial.
Beneficial because according to Advisory Board analysis, a 1 percent increase in engagement yielded a 0.33-point improvement in Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems overall hospital rating. These scores influence a hospital's' Medicare reimbursement by up to plus-or-minus 2 percent, not to mention patient decisions in choosing a provider.
Also, every 1 percent rise in engagement also correlated to a 0.41-point gain in Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Culture of Safety Patient Safety Grade, Advisory Board's analysis showed.
Finally, engagement influences hospital performance. Engaged employees are 1.5 times more likely to score high performance ratings than those that are simply content and three times more likely those that are disengaged.
Twitter: @BethJSanborn
Email the writer: beth.sandborn@himssmedia.com