Patient Satisfaction

Patient satisfaction surveys and studies is an important tool in assessing the quality care outcomes. If designed and administered properly, the patient satisfaction surveys become excellent tools for assessing the quality of care received. However, there has long been a debate whether there is a correlation between patient satisfaction and quality outcomes, especially when the physician and the hospital compensation has been tied to the patient satisfaction measures.
Patient satisfaction is largely dependent on their individual interpersonal experiences. Surveys indicate that with better treatment and proper adherence to clinical guidelines, it leads to good patient satisfaction and better outcomes. Factors such as waiting time, rapport between
the patient and the physician, adherence to clinical guidelines, patient’s present health condition, positive treatment outcomes, improved technical care from nurses and non physician staff, the payment for the treatments and prescriptions, mortality rate, room features such as employing singing, costumed greeters, meals etc all had a major impact on patient satisfaction, rather than just treatment outcomes.
Critics often argue that patient feedback is not reliable, as they do not have any knowledge of medical training and not all the times do they appreciate the treatment and prescriptions given by the physician, even after strong adherence to clinical guidelines.
For example a patient admitted with multi-organ failure, have to be put on continuous high dose antibiotics, saline, IV fluids, artificial ventilator, painkillers,etc, having high risk of mortality would never be satisfied with how much better treatment he would be given and would simply be happy if the patients desires are fulfilled by giving just a placebo treatment, for example, their request for a certain drug, regardless of its benefit. Another example is that if a patient is made to wait for 45min in the ED department and then even after providing the best treatment, he is bound to give bad patient experience on that particular visit as he is not happy with the waiting time, no matter even if the quality of treatment given was
perfect.
I conclude by telling that, there is always a positive correlation between patient satisfaction and the quality outcomes.
Inconsistent results concerning patient-satisfaction measures and health outcomes can be solved if the surveys address a specific event or visit, focus on provider-patient interactions, and are assessed in a timely manner then they seem to capture an important and otherwise unmeasured dimension of quality of care. The debate should center not on whether patients can provide meaningful quality measures but on how to improve patient experiences by focusing on activities such as physician-provider care coordination and patient engagement. Developing measurement approaches that provide timely and actionable information regarding patient satisfaction and quality outcomes can facilitate organizational change, and facilitate in the overall well being of the healthcare
organization.