How Reliable are Patient Satisfaction Surveys?
On the one hand:
A team of UC Davis researchers found that people who are the most satisfied with their doctors are more likely to be hospitalized, accumulate more health-care and drug expenditures, and have higher death rates than patients who are less satisfied with their care.
On the other hand:
Researchers at Imperial College London found that hospitals with better patient ratings tend to have lower death rates and lower readmission rates. Hospitals rated by patients as being cleaner have lower rates of MRSA infections.
So what are we supposed to believe?
This is certainly counterintuitive. I guess if you see your doctor often enough that you’re on a first name basis and he/she greets you like an old friend, your health status is probably pretty bad. Me? My doctor wouldn’t know me if I ran into him on the street.
More studies might be needed
I bet patient satisfaction rates would differ between those who are paying for their care themselves and those whose care is paid for by third parties.
“So what are we supposed to believe?”
Probably that some measures of satisfaction, like cleanliness, may be associated with better quality of care, but other measures of satisfaction may be influenced by irrelevant factors that don’t necessarily correlate with better quality. I can’t think of many plausible mechanisms for the findings from the UC Davis study, but perhaps there are things done in hospitals that are good for a patient’s health but are also annoying (such as frequency of blood tests, or something of that nature).
Think that US and UK patients demand the same set of attributes in a hospital and health care in general?
I agree with the thinking that if you are seeing your doctor on a first name friendly basis maybe you are getting too much medicine.
Also calls into question the adverse incentives to over-prescribe pharmaceuticals; “I like my doctor bc he/she gives me adderall…”