Marshall Journal of Medicine (Oct 2018)

Optimizing quality of care by patient satisfaction for the department of Orthopaedics - A survey study

  • Milad Modarresi ,
  • Ammar Qureshi,
  • Rodrigo Aguilar,
  • Meghan Anderson,
  • Felix Cheung

DOI
https://doi.org/10.18590/mjm.2018.vol4.iss4.9
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 4, no. 4
pp. 56 – 64

Abstract

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Introduction: Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and System (HCAHPS) has provided a standardized survey method in order to evaluate the patient’s satisfaction on the care they are provided. While overall patient satisfaction is clearly a multidimensional concept, the HCAHPS survey covers 8 domains of health care. This study tries to identify and establish the main determinants to patient’s level of satisfaction during their visit to Cabell Huntington Hospital Orthopaedics department. Methods: Data was collected from surveys handed in 3 consecutive months; June, July and August of 2013. Sixteen questions were selected from HCAHPS that were appraised to be relevant for the use in orthopaedics department. The main dependent questions that allowed patients to rate their overall satisfaction were (1) how much is the patient likely to recommend the department is and (2) how would they rate their overall satisfaction in their visits. We then studied each of the other 14 questions (independent questions) the patients were made to answer and how much they determined the overall patient satisfaction. We also divided the questionnaire into those questions the health care provider had control over (modifiable) and those where that were not under their control (non-modifiable). Data was then gathered and step-wise multi variable regression analysis was performed. All analyses were performed using SAS version 9.3. Results: 1138 patients answered the survery. The independent questions that had the maximum impact on the overall patient satisfaction was whether the nurses treated them with respect (OR = 11.5, 95% CI 3.1-43.12. Conclusion: We determined that how the nurses treat the patients and whether the doctors listened to their patients carefully had the highest impact on determining patient’s overall satisfaction and their likelihood of recommending the doctors to their relatives or friends respectively. Our study depicts the patients’ experience of their visit to the orthopedic office is dependent on a variety of factors, which can be modified by the healthcare providers in order to improve the patient’s satisfaction.

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