Report Shares Insights on Patients’ Perceptions of Clean

A recent report by Compass One Healthcare, a health care support services company, and Press Ganey, a health care consulting company, has revealed that patients’ experiences within ambulatory care facilities (such as doctors’ offices and outpatient surgery centers) can affect their perceptions of the setting’s cleanliness.

The report was comprised from input provided by more than a million post-procedure patient surveys. Key findings included the following:

• There was a statistically significant relationship between a patient’s perception of facility cleanliness and signs of infection outside of that facility.If patients did not feel like the facility was clean, they were 2.3 times more likely to report signs of infection after leaving the ambulatory care setting.
• Perceptions of cleanliness were most impacted by three patient experience factors: 1) the courtesy of nonclinical staff members, 2) feeling comfortable during their experience, and 3) the overall efficiency of their experience (e.g., a seamless check-in process or good pre-procedure communication).
• Perceptions of cleanliness differed based on key patient demographics, including region, gender, race, and ethnicity.For example, perceptions of cleanliness among male respondents were more highly influenced by staff “courtesy and respect,” while female respondents were more impacted by their overall perceptions of the facility and how helpful the patient access team was.

“As ambulatory care centers see an increasingly higher volume of patients, it’s more important than ever to focus on improving the human experience of health care and ensuring a clean, safe environment for all patients,” said Charles Hagood, president of strategic consulting at Press Ganey.