Quantifying Missed Nursing Care Using the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) Survey

OBJECTIVE The aim of this article is to describe the use of Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) data to measure missed nursing care and construct a missed nursing care metric. BACKGROUND Missed nursing care varies widely within and between US hospitals. Missed nursing care can be measured utilizing the HCAHPS data. METHODS This cross-sectional study used HCAHPS data to measure missed care. RESULTS This analysis includes HCAHPS data from 1125 acute care patients discharged between January 2014 and December 2014. A missed care index was computed by dividing the total number of missed care occurrences as reported by the patient into the total number of survey responses that did not indicate missed care. The computed missed care index for the organization was 0.6 with individual unit indices ranging from 0.2 to 1.4. CONCLUSIONS Our methods utilize existing data to quantify missed nursing care. Based on the assessment, nursing leaders can develop interventions to decrease the incidence of missed care. Further data should be gathered to validate the incidence of missed care from HCAHPS reports.