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Is There A Relationship Between Patient Satisfaction And Favorable Surgical Outcomes?
Gregory Kennedy*, Sarah Tevis*, K. Craig Kent
University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI

OBJECTIVE(S): Patient satisfaction with the health care experience has become a top priority for Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. With resources and efforts directed at patient satisfaction, we wished to evaluate whether high patient satisfaction on HCAHPS surveys correlates with favorable outcomes.
METHODS: Medical centers were identified from the University Health System Consortium database from 2011-2012. Variables included hospital characteristics, process measure compliance and surgical outcomes. Chi squared analysis was used to evaluate for variables associated with high patient satisfaction, defined as hospitals that scored above the 50th percentile.
RESULTS: We identified 171 hospitals with complete data. The following variables were significantly associated with high overall patient satisfaction: larger hospitals, higher surgical volume and lower mortality (Table 1, p<0.001). Overall, compliance with process measures and patient safety indicators, as well as length of stay, did not correlate with satisfaction. Numerically, complication (p=0.491) and readmission rates (p=0.056) were found to have an inverse relationship with patient satisfaction.
CONCLUSIONS: We found that hospital size and surgical volume were associated with high patient satisfaction. However, with the exception of low mortality, we were surprised to find that all other favorable outcomes were not associated with high HCAHPS scores. With existing satisfaction surveys, we conclude that factors outside of surgical outcomes appear to influence patients’ perception of care.

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