T. M. Khan1, J. J. Aalberg1, A. Ofshteyn1, S. Subramaniam1, C. M. Divino1 1Icahn School Of Medicine At Mount Sinai,Division Of General Surgery, Department Of Surgery,New York, NY, USA
Introduction:
Patient satisfaction scores have emerged as important metrics in the delivery of high quality health care. While the association between patient satisfaction and clinical outcomes such as performance on Surgical Care Improvement Program measures have been previously investigated, how these subjective satisfaction scores relate to individual surgeon performance is less well documented. In this study, we evaluated this relationship by comparing patients’ satisfaction with their physician providers as measured by the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Provers and Systems survey (HCAHPS) with the morbidity and mortality rates of the individual treating surgeons.
Methods:
Completed HCAHPS surveys for patients treated by surgeons practicing MIS/Bariatric, General Abdominal, Colorectal, and Surgical Oncology at an urban, tertiary care, academic medical center between July 1, 2015 and September 31, 2016 were reviewed retrospectively. Responses to the HCAHPS questions pertaining to patient satisfaction with physicians (namely: 1. during this hospital stay, how often did doctors treat you with courtesy and respect? 2. how often did doctors listen carefully to you? and 3. how often did doctors explain things in a way you could understand?) were recorded. The categorical responses to these questions were converted to numerical scores (Always = 4, Usually = 3, Sometimes = 2, Never = 1), and the average scores were calculated for each attending surgeon. The 30-day mortality and risk-adjusted complication rates during the same time frame for each surgeon were abstracted from the institutional Morbidity and Mortality database. The Pearson correlation coefficient was then calculated to evaluate the relationship between satisfaction score and surgeon performance.
Results:
HCAHPS survey results from 736 patients treated by 30 attending surgeons were reviewed. Overall, surgeons scored favorably in the survey, with aggregate average scores of 3.84, 3.80, and 3.77 (out of maximum 4 corresponding to "Always") for the questions "how often did doctors treat with courtesy/respect,” “how often did doctors listen carefully to you,” and “how often did doctors explain in way you could understand,” respectively. Satistically significant correlation was not observed between the average satisfaction scores and the complication and mortality figures for individual surgeons (Table 1).
Conclusion:
Patient satisfaction with their physician providers as measured by HCAHPS does not correlate with individual surgeon morbidity and mortality rates.
