Influencing Plastic Surgery Experience: Factors affecting patient satisfaction surveys
Kevin Chen, MD, Susan Congiusta, Ira S. Nash, MD, Mark L. Smith, MD, Armen K. Kasabian, MD, Charles H. Thorne, MD, Neil Tanna, MD.
Hofstra Northwell School of Medicine, Manhasset, NY, USA.
BACKGROUND: Patient satisfaction surveys are an increasingly important part of healthcare, influencing the practice of physicians.i Given the changing landscape of health insurance and reimbursement, providers seek to satisfy patients in order to maintain and grow patient loyalty and market share. Press Ganey has developed tools to assess physician and department performance that is in use by 50% of hospitals in the US and over 10,000 healthcare organizations.ii The authors sought to evaluate the factors that influence patient satisfaction, specifically in plastic surgery patients, both locally and nationally.
METHODS: A 26 item Press Ganey survey was distributed to patients of 686 participating plastic surgeons nationwide, including those at the authors' home institution. The responses from January to December 2016 were retrospectively analyzed with Pearson correlation coefficients. A common surrogate for overall patient satisfaction and loyalty is response to the Press Ganey survey item "Likelihood to recommend provider to others." This "Likelihood to recommend" was used as the primary outcome measure and correlated with the other 25 items.
RESULTS: There were 411 survey responses from patients seen by plastic surgeons in the Northwell health system and 36,836 responses from patients seen nationally. Items that were not well correlated (r<0.5) with "Likelihood to recommend" were ease of getting speaking on telephone, wait time, and courtesy of registration staff. The items that were best correlated (r>0.8) with "Likelihood to recommend" were confidence in care provider, how inclusive the care provider was in decision making, and concern for questions. All items were statistically significant (p<0.001). The confidence in the care provider and the overall perception of the care provider were most correlated with a patient's likelihood to recommend the provider to prospective patients.
CONCLUSION: In an evolving patient centric culture, the patient's confidence and trust of the provider is more important than perception of the provider's office environment to maintaining patient loyalty and market share.
Endnotes
i Long, C., Tsay, E. L., Jacobo, S. A., Popat, R., Singh, K., & Chang, R. T. (2016). Factors Associated with Patient Press Ganey Satisfaction Scores for Ophthalmology Patients. Ophthalmology, 123(2), 242-247. doi:10.1016/j.ophtha.2015.09.044
ii Rogers, F., Horst, M., To, T., Rogers, A., Edavettal, M., Wu, D., et al. (2013). Factors associated with patient satisfaction scores for physician care in trauma patients. The Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery, 75(1), 110-4- discussion 114-5. doi:10.1097/TA.0b013e318298484f
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