What is Patient Satisfaction Data – Really?

Posted on September 10, 2012 by Dr. David Edward Marcinko MBA MEd CMP™

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Is it all about Subjectivity?

By Brent Mefesel MD

Patient Satisfaction data [PSD] 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.  Although not a direct measure of clinical quality, many researchers link patient satisfaction to clinical outcomes.

Resource Intense

This PSD 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 may also 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.

Recent Evolution

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.

More CAHPS®

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.

Assessment

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.

Conclusion

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