Good Patient Experiences Are Critical for Desirable Outcomes and Better Reimbursement
// By Joyce Miller and Beverly Schulman //
The road to the rise of the patient experience
A number of studies show links between desirable clinical outcomes and high patient satisfaction scores. Medicare and other payers are beginning to tie reimbursement to high patient satisfaction scores. In short, patient satisfaction has emerged as a key factor in measuring quality of care and patient outcomes and an essential element in pay-for-performance metrics.
Before 2008, there was no valid method to compare patient satisfaction among hospitals. Although hospitals have surveyed patients for many years about their treatment experiences, lack of standardized survey content made comparisons among hospitals nearly impossible, with the possible exception of those facilities that were part of systems that mandated standardized survey questions. Facilities that purchased patient survey services from national suppliers, such as Professional Research Consultants and Press Ganey, were also able to determine how they ranked compared with their peers.