Hospital survey shows improvements in patient experience.

Hospitals are improving the inpatient care experience. A government survey that measures patients' experiences with a range of issues from staff responsiveness to hospital cleanliness-the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems survey-is showing modest but meaningful gains. Using data from the surveys reported in March 2008 and March 2009, we present the first comprehensive national assessment of changes in patients' experiences with inpatient care since public reporting of the results began. We found improvements in all measures of patient experience, except doctors' communication. These improvements were fairly uniform across hospitals. The largest increases were in measures related to staff responsiveness and the discharge information that patients received.