Patient Satisfaction

Purpose

This analysis aims to compare patient-physician communication rates with heart failure readmission and mortality rates among different types of hospitals.

Patient engagement is a growing area of focus for the US healthcare system because there is an association between reported levels of patient engagement, satisfaction, and improved clinical outcomes (Hibbard & Greene, 2013, Henning-Smith et al., 2020). As a result, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has included patient and family engagement as part of the Quality Payment Program. One primary aim of patient engagement is to improve communication between providers/organizations and patients. Patients who better understand the health information related to their care are more likely to have improved outcomes (Kelley et al., 2014). One measure of clinical communication is the rate at which physicians always communicate well with patients in the hospital setting.

This scenario includes benchmarks for each appropriate variable. State-level benchmarks are accessible by filtering by state. Scenarios with multiple outcome variables require filtering by the specific outcome to return the corresponding benchmarks.

This data is also available as an Excel spreadsheet.

Patient Satisfaction 2022.xlsx (775.77 KB)

This alternate format also provides hospital-specific data.

Tutorial Video
Data Sources
Defining The Columns

In this tutorial video, we look at Patient Satisfaction. The video guides you through how to use Tableau data analysis to compare patient-physician communication rates with heart failure readmission and mortality rates among different types of hospitals.

Patient Satisfaction Tutorial Video

Hospital Compare - Hospital General Information (Data released January 2022)

Hospital Compare - Payment and Value of Care (Data released January 2022)

Hospital Compare - Patient Surveys - HCAHPS (Data released January 2022)

Hospital Compare - Unplanned Hospital Visits (Data released January 2022)

Hospital Compare - Complications and Deaths (Data released January 2022)

A blank entry indicates unreported data. A value of zero is defined and does not represent unreported data.

State: The abbreviated name of the state where the hospital is located.

County: The name of the county where the hospital is located. County names are listed as provided on the US Census Bureau's list of 2020 FIPS Codes for Counties and County Equivalent Entities.

Hospital: The name of the hospital.

Hospital Type: The type of hospital includes acute care hospitals, acute care - Department of Defense hospitals, critical access hospitals, and children's hospitals.

Percent of Doctors That Always Communicate: The percentage of hospital inpatients reporting that doctors always communicate well from the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey about patient experience and satisfaction. The reporting period for this measure is July 1, 2020, through March 31, 2021.

HF Payment: Average Medicare spending per beneficiary for heart failure (HF) patients spans three days before an inpatient admission and 30 days after discharge.

Payment Denominator: Number of HF patients seen by the hospital during the reporting period. The reporting period for this measure is July 1, 2017, through December 1, 2019.

Health Outcome Measure: The coded name of the major complications and death measures. The measures include:

MORT_30_HF: Heart Failure 30-day mortality rate
READM_30_HF: Heart Failure 30-day readmission rate

Health Outcome Rate: The rate for the specific health outcome measure. A lower measure is desired as this indicates a lower proportion of HF mortality and HF readmissions. The reporting period for these measures is July 1, 2017, through December 1, 2019.

Population Type: An indication of whether a county is predominantly metropolitan, micropolitan, or rural.