Home infusion patient satisfaction to be studied

Following through on an initiative announced at its 2016 annual meeting (New Orleans, March 21-24), the National Home Infusion Foundation has launched a “patient satisfaction survey" study. The immediate goal is to “develop a validated, standardized set of patient satisfaction survey questions for home infusion providers to use in organizational assessment tools.” To this end,  NHIF (the educational arm of the National Home Infusion Assn.) is soliciting input from experts in the home infusion field to participate in the effort.

NHIA has an obvious motivation to better analyze the home infusion field, but it’s also bringing some needed structure to the activity, which these days combines growing importance for pharma companies engaging in direct-to-patient drug administration of injectables, and difficulties in navigating reimbursements with Medicare. (A “site of care” bill is currently in committee in Congress.) Earlier this year, NHIA published a Standard Definitions for Patient Outcomes compendium, as part of a larger industry-wide data initiative.

“Patient satisfaction surveys have gained increasing attention as essential sources of information for identifying gaps and developing effective action plans to improve overall quality of care in organizations across the health care continuum,” said NHIF VP of research, Connie Sullivan, RPh, who will be coordinating the study, in a statement. “With the current focus on value-based purchasing, the delivery of high-quality home infusion care requires providers to carefully consider the patient’s experience.”

Industry input will be gathered between now and the end of this year; the actual study is expected to follow from that. More information is available here.