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[By Dr. Brent A. Metfessel MS]

Patient satisfaction is a subjective measure of what the patient perceives in terms of the level of service quality and care provided by the clinician. Many health plans consider patient satisfaction an important measure of physician quality.

Now, although not a direct measure of clinical quality, many researchers link patient satisfaction to clinical outcomes. This data, however, is also resource-intensive to collect and requires commitment on the part of the patient to fill out the forms and return them in the mail or on-line.

Selection Bias

However, selection bias may occur in terms of patient satisfaction data, in that patients who choose to fill out and return the forms may in some cases not be representative of the overall patient population for a physician.

Enter the CAHPS® Consortium

More recently, the field has been moving from measuring “satisfaction” to elucidating a more validated and specific “patient experience of care”.  The Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS®), funded and administered by the Agency for Healthcare Quality (AHRQ), is a part of a national initiative to measure, report on, and improve health care quality from the viewpoint of patients and other consumers. Separate surveys are used for evaluating ambulatory care and facility or hospital care.

In addition, the National CAHPS Benchmarking Database contains over 10 years of CAHPS survey data from commercial and Medicaid plans and is designed to facilitate comparative analysis of individual CAHPS survey results with benchmarks, including national or regional averages. The CAHPS program works closely with other public and private research agencies, known collectively as the CAHPS Consortium, for continued review and enhancement of the survey tools.

Pre-Order Book Now [more from this author]

We are now preparing the next edition of our book:
“Hospitals and Healthcare Organizations”  [Operational Management Strategies, Tools, Techniques and Case Studies].

In-Process from: (c) Productivity Press 2012
http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781439879900 

About the Author

Brent A. Metfessel, MD MS is currently Senior Medical Informaticist in Clinical Analytics at UnitedHealthcare, where he designs physician measurement algorithms and statistical methods and leads the application of risk adjustment methodologies to various health care quality and cost-efficiency measurement initiatives. He also has a decade of experience in general computer science, statistical analysis, artificial intelligence, and computational biology. Dr. Metfessel received his Masters of Science Degree in health informatics from the Universityof Minnesota and his Medical Doctorate from the Universityof California, San Diego. 

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Filed under: Quality Initiatives | Tagged: Agency for Healthcare Quality, AHRQ, Brent A. Metfessel MD, CAHPS® Consortium, How Do Health Plans Measure Patient Satisfaction, National CAHPS Benchmarking Database, patient satisfaction surveys, The Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems | 3 Comments »