17.05.2010Santeon and health insurers jointly provide greater transparency in healthcare

National hospital group Santeon and the Miletus Foundation – a cooperative of health insurers that measures patients’ experiences with healthcare – join forces by launching a digital pilot of the Consumer Quality Index (CQindex) in mid-May. This index digitally charts the quality of hospital care from the patient’s perspective, both at a hospital and a specialty level. The aim is to use the results as a base for improvement, for the purchase and sale of healthcare and for patient information. The pilot is supported by the Federation of Patients and Consumer Organisations in the Netherlands (NPCF). This is the first time for a hospital group in the Netherlands to conduct a patient experience survey in cooperation with health insurers.

Improving healthcare
The digital pilot of the CQ index charts the quality of care, from the patients’ perspective, unequivocally, continuously, real-time and online.
‘When it comes to the quality of healthcare, the patient is the key factor. Their experiences with care provide us with a crucial insight into what we do right and what can be improved’, says Douwe Hemrika, chairman of Santeon, as well as chairman of the board of the OLVG. The national hospital group Santeon consists of six leading, top clinical hospitals spread across the Netherlands.
‘If we as Santeon hospitals use the digital CQindex to continuously measure and compare the outpatients department and clinical experiences of a large group of patients, we obtain real-time information at a specialty level. This will prompt hospitals to systematically improve themselves. Patients will benefit, as it makes it easier for them to choose in which hospital they want to be treated for which specialty.’

In the joint pilot, more than 70,000 patients have the opportunity to participate in the survey, in which one independent survey agency will present them with a short, digital questionnaire. The questions refer to the entire healthcare process of accessibility, admission, care by doctors and nurses, up to discharge and follow-up care.

Santeon decided to run this pilot since there is little transparency and concurrence regarding the measurement of quality of healthcare. To measure patients’ experiences, hospitals, health insurers, comparison sites and patient organisations currently use many different (own) measuring instruments and methods. This makes it hard to compare different hospitals. Already, health insurers annually execute a paper version of the CQindex among a limited group of clinical patients. But the results merely provide insight at a general hospital level and are available at a late stage.

The pilot will show whether the digital measurement of hospital care by means of the CQ index works, whether it can be used for the purchase of care and whether this method is suitable for a nationwide implementation.