Maintaining high patient satisfaction scores is important to any group interested in maintaining its ED contract. They're key to growing market share and decreasing liability. So no matter whether you're group is in the 20th or 80th percentile, most are always looking for ways to improve. What works? What doesn't? What gets you the most bang for the buck? In the series, "Improving patient satisfaction: an evidence based approach," I'll take a look at a few studies that have looked into the issue. Perhaps you'll learn a useful tidbit that you can incorporate into your practice ...JS Williams et al demonstrated that sprucing up the physical infrastructure of the ED had little impact on patient satisfaction scores and that what really matters to patients, in terms of making them happy, is the length of stay, the shorter, the better. Here's some additional details on their study:
Methods
We conducted a retrospective review of patient satisfaction scores before and after major renovations in a large, inner-city academic emergency department. The patient satisfaction scores in this hospital are collected by an independent contractor that retrieves and analyzes approximately 30 surveys monthly from randomized patients. The ED underwent a major renovation in the areas of the department that primarily treat low and moderate acuity patients. The renovations created private rooms with flat-panel televisions, an updated entrance and parking, and a new waiting room and nursing station. Overall satisfaction of ED care, time in emergency department, quality of care, and privacy were the variables selected for review. Pre-renovation data included the third and fourth quarter prior to construction and the same quarters for the following 2 years after the completion of the remodel, resulting in 573 patient reviews. This included 196 from 2004, 191 from 2005, and 186 from 2006.
Results
There was no statistical difference in patient satisfaction scores after the renovation. Moreover, there was no difference between the rated quality of care and likelihood of recommending the emergency department to their peers. Further, the length of stay was unchanged during the time periods studied, and a majority of the respondents still indicated prompt care and long wait times were the biggest need for improvement. An unexpected finding was that even after the renovations, which included private rooms, more patients rated their privacy as fair or poor (12.13% versus 7.65%).
Hmmmm ... interesting. The results of this study seem a bit surprising to me. I thought that there would be at least some improvement in satisfaction scores with improvements in physical infrastructure. Perhaps our limited administrative budgets should be spent improving throughput rather than buying a flat screen TV to distract patients while they wait.
Source
Williams, JS, Lee, MA, Morrisey, T. "Remodeling Patient Satisfaction." Annals of Emergency Medicine: ICEM 2008 Scientific Abstract Program. v 51. April 2008.
