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Patient satisfaction sets the foundation for a positive health care visit with a provider. Physicians provide a service, and this care is judged not only by the accuracy of their diagnoses but also by the manner in which it is provided. Patient satisfaction surveys are being increasingly used to understand what impacts patients' responses so as to improve the quality of care and overall outcomes of treatment.1 The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has initiated value-based purchasing programs concerning patient satisfaction with incentive payments to hospitals regarding their performance on “quality” measures.2,3 Additionally, these programs are used as promotional advancement metrics for physicians and reimbursement.4,5
Measuring patient satisfaction is multidimensional. The Press Ganey Survey is widely used across different health care specialties and settings and attempts to capture or measure the various dimensions or domains of patient satisfaction.6,7 It is generated from 6 domains: access, moving through the visit, nurse/assistant, care provider, personal issues, and special services/valet parking. These domains are unique in their ability to impact a patient's overall experience, investigating everything from the courtesy of the staff and the provider to the efficiency of the visit. Each domain's individual influence on patient satisfaction is commonly overlooked, and the overall visit is typically interpreted in the overall patient satisfaction score. Each patient brings his or her own innate characteristics to the visit and perceives the importance of the visit differently.8 The Press Ganey Survey is a valid instrument for measuring satisfaction,6 but it is not known which domains are most impactful on patient satisfaction. Clinics attempt different strategies to increase overall patient satisfaction, and satisfaction scores are often used to merit promotion and physician monetary bonuses.9 A paucity of research exists concerning which of the 6 domains of the Press Ganey Survey are most impactful on patient satisfaction and therefore potential areas on which to focus resources.
Given the diverse nature of the 6 domains that make up the Press Ganey Survey, their individual impact on a patient's overall satisfaction with a visit must be investigated. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to evaluate patient satisfaction with an academic orthopedic clinical encounter as a function of the 6 domains of the Press Ganey Survey. In particular, the authors examined which of the...