Understanding patient satisfaction ratings for radiology services

Abstract

Objective: Under the Hospital Value-Based Purchasing Program of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, patient satisfaction accounts for 30% of the measures of and payments for quality of care. Understanding what drives patient satisfaction data and how the data are obtained, converted into scores, and formulated into rankings is increasingly critical for imaging departments. The objectives of this article are to describe the potential impact of patient satisfaction ratings on institutions and individuals, explain how patient satisfaction is rated and ranked, identify drivers that affect the ratings and rankings, and probe the resulting challenges unique to radiology departments.

Conclusion: Research results indicate that training providers to make simple modifications in their language and behavior during patient care can significantly impact patient satisfaction, which, in turn, can impact both quality-of-care ratings and the bottom line of hospitals. Training providers is a simple and cost-effective way to potentiate the clinical expression of compassion into improvement of patient satisfaction and financial reward, a national trend that no one in the game can afford to ignore.

Figures

Figure 1

Conversion of Raw Scores into Percentile Rankings. Note how small changes in Raw Scores are associated with major changes in Percentile Rankings at the steep end of the hockey stick.

Figure 2

Effect of Communication Training on Rankings. Depiction of changes in patient satisfaction rankings for the Test and Treatment domain from 8 months prior to the training initiation to 8 months post training, based on benchmarking among 908 institutions.