Prioritizing Patient Rest: Our Response to the New HCAHPS Restfulness Questions

By Melvin Carrillo, MBA, BSN, RN, CPXP
Manager, Patient Experience
The Queen’s Medical Center

On January 1, 2025, CMS updated its HCAHPS survey—including three questions focused on restfulness during a hospital stay. With these updates, we saw a timely opportunity to reexamine how we support healing environments across our system in Honolulu, HI. At The Queen’s Medical Center, we know that rest isn’t a luxury in healthcare—it’s essential to recovery. That’s why we’ve taken a proactive, systemwide approach to respond.

We began by socializing the CMS HCAHPS question changes with nurses, physicians, providers, and ancillary teams, starting from the executive level and cascading through the organization. Our Patient Experience Steering Committee quickly assembled a dedicated sub-committee to address the new questions and prepare us for upcoming benchmarking and evidence-based guidance.

Here are some of the thoughtful tactics currently under consideration and implementation:

• Rest as a Goal: We’re intentionally using the word “rest” during care conversations and documenting a rest goal on patient communication boards to set expectations and reinforce its importance.
• Environment Adjustments: We’re addressing the environment by entering work orders for squeaky wheels and door hinges while being mindful of the impact of too many interruptions to a patient’s rest and recovery.
• Rest Kits: Our inpatients are offered kits that include eye masks, earplugs, and aromatherapy—small gestures that make a big difference.
• Clustering & Narrating Care: Care teams are trained to cluster care activities to limit disruptions and narrate their efforts to promote a restful setting (like closing doors to ensure privacy, maintaining room temperature, and reducing external noise).
• Training: We’ve added rest-focused strategies to both new clinical staff orientation and our mandatory Patient Experience Simulation Training, which all new RNs attend within their first 90 days.
• Ambassador Volunteers: As part of our Patient Experience team, our Ambassador Volunteer Program includes proactive inpatient visits by volunteers who reinforce the importance of rest and offer kits when needed.

These actions are more than a reaction to a survey change—it’s a culture shift. By aligning clinical practice, operations, and patient communication, we’re reinforcing that a healing environment starts with rest. As we continue this work, we remain grounded in our commitment to put patients first—and help them truly rest, recover, and heal.

Melvin “Mel” Carrillo, MBA, BSN, RN, CPXP

Mel Carrillo is the Manager of Patient Experience and Guest Services in Honolulu at The Queen’s Medical Center – Manamana, the only acute care hospital in the state of Hawai‘i with a Level 1 Trauma Center and the only Hawai’i hospital to achieve Magnet Recognition.® In his prior role as Care Experience Leader at the Los Angeles Medical Center, Kaiser Permanente’s flagship hospital, he was the recipient of Avatar International’s (Press Ganey) 2013 Gold Innovation Award.

With over 25 years of experience as a Registered Nurse and nurse leader, Carrillo has a clinical and operational background in leading system programs; patient experience; and management of various inpatient and outpatient departments.  He has led procedural, inpatient and outpatient/ambulatory clinics at the Los Angeles Medical Center, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, and Hackensack Meridian Health’s Hackensack University Medical Center. Carrillo also served as a nurse consultant on the Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s national committee, “Transforming Care at the Bedside.”

Carrillo is a Certified Patient Experience Professional (CPXP) with a decade of experience leading patient experience. He earned a Master of Business Administration from the University of Phoenix and a Bachelor of Nursing from Rutger’s University. Carrillo is a former President of the Philippine Nurses Association of Southern California, Inc., and Founding President for the Philippine Nurses Association of New Jersey, Bergen County Sub-Chapter.  He is also the Founding Assistant Chief of Ramapo College’s Emergency Medical Services (RC-EMS). 

Additionally, volunteering at a community hospital, ambulance departments, and fire/heavy rescue departments have helped fuel Carrillo’s passion for improving health care and the human/patient experience.