Pedagogical value of a hospitality awards programme

OBJECTIVE: Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris (AP-HP), the leading university hospital in France, proposed to offer its services to candidate on a voluntary basis for a hospitality award, certifying compliance to a 240-item home-made questionnaire designed by healthcare providers and patients’ representatives. It combined an objective examination of the services and patients’ questionnaires, covering seven domains: reception and information from admission to discharge; cleanliness, comfort and environment; proposed services (eg, access to Wi-Fi); culture, relaxation and well-being; meals; linen and relationship quality with hospital staff. The procedure was completed in two steps: an initial self-evaluation to detect improvable deficiencies, followed by an awarding visit. A service received the hospitality award if at least 80% of the reference criteria were met during this second evaluation. Here, we describe the construction of this hospitality awards programme and present a comparison of the scores obtained during the two steps. DESIGN AND METHODS: Retrospective comparison by usual statistical tests. SETTING: AP-HP, grouping 39 university hospitals (21 000 beds, 8 million annual patient visits). PARTICIPANTS: The 211 services from 29 different hospitals engaged in the procedure (2017–2019). RESULTS: Only one service did not get the award (self-evaluation 83%, visit score 79%). The score was higher during the awarding visit (89.0%±5.6%) than during self-evaluation (85.5%±4.3%, n=211, p<0.00001), with increased scores for the following domains (p<0.005): patient reception and information; cleanliness, comfort and environment; proposed services; culture, relaxation and well-being. CONCLUSION: (1) Internal self-evaluation is feasible. (2) By diffusing criteria of hospitality, the procedure had a pedagogical value leading to rapid and significant improvements. (3) This quality assessment procedure results in an award that can be posted in the departments. By appealing to pride, this procedure should promote hospitality in hospitals.