Dive Brief:
- Hospital size and English as the primary language are the main predictors of patient satisfaction, according to a Mount Sinai Medical Center study published in the Journal of Hospital Medicine.
- The lowest scores were in densely populated areas (California, New Jersey, etc) versus higher scores in less populated areas. Data was surveyed from more than 900,000 patients at about 4,000 hospitals.
- "Across the country, large hospital size and non-English as a primary language predicted poor patient satisfaction scores while white race and higher education levels predicted better scores," said study author Daniel McFarland.
Dive Insight:
As patient satisfaction scores begin to play a bigger role in Medicare reimbursement formulas, improving these scores will be key to a successful transition from fee-for-services to a value-based system—especially, this study indicates, for large, urban facilities. The authors suggested that the current formula needs an adjustment to be fair to these hospitals and offers a formula they developed to achieve this.
The onus is still on hospitals to demonstrate patient satisfaction improvement, however, and part of that will be improving widespread racial disparities in the delivery of care. A 2014 study in JAMA Surgery found that nonwhite patients receiving a coronary artery bypass graft had a 34% increased risk of death over white patients receiving the same procedure.