C. B. Matsen1, D. Ray1, M. O. Bishop2, A. P. Presson2, S. R. Finlayson1 1University Of Utah,Surgery/General Surgery,Salt Lake City, UT, USA 2University Of Utah,Epidemiology/Internal Medicine,Salt Lake City, UT, USA
Introduction: Patient satisfaction is an important quality metric used by many healthcare systems. Most large academic centers have multiple facilities with outpatient surgical clinics. For providers who see patients at multiple sites, we asked whether satisfaction scores may be affected by where the patient is seen. We were specifically interested in how the site of the visit might impact satisfaction with the care provider.
Methods: We obtained patient satisfaction data from the Press-Ganey survey over one year for five providers who saw patients at both a university hospital clinic and a comprehensive cancer center in separate buildings on the same campus. Logistic regression models were used to estimate the odds of a perfect satisfaction score (100%) by clinic, adjusting for the patient’s age, gender and the care provider. Seven satisfaction outcomes were analyzed, including the total score and its 6 subdomains (overall assessment, access, moving through visit, nurse/assistant, care provider, personal issues). All satisfaction measures were dichotomized due to the high rate of perfect satisfaction. We report odds ratios (ORs), 95% confidence intervals (CIs) and p-values. Statistical significance was evaluated at the 0.05 level and all tests were two-tailed.
Results: 424 patient experiences across the two sites (234 at the cancer center, 190 at the university clinic) were analyzed. After adjusting for patient age, sex and care provider, odds of satisfaction were lower in the university clinic relative to the cancer center for all measures, although moving through visit (which asked about delays and wait times) and care provider (which asked about the patient’s experience with the care provider) did not achieve statistical significance (Table 1). The “personal issues” domain, which queried “the cleanliness of the practice”, had a 54% lower odds of satisfaction at the university clinic than the cancer center (OR=0.46, 95% CI: 0.26-0.8, p<0.001). There were also statistically significant differences in satisfaction among the providers for total satisfaction, moving through visit, nurse/assistant and care provider (all p<0.05).
Conclusion: In our single institution study, patient reported satisfaction was consistently associated with the site of the visit. Patient reported satisfaction with the provider appears to be influenced by both the provider and the site of the visit. The site-specific factors may include additional patient factors that were not adjusted for in our analysis, such as acuity and severity of illness, or other factors related to the setting.
