Hospital Efforts to Improve Patient Satisfaction

Kaiser Health News reported earlier this month on hospital efforts to improve patient satisfaction.  See the report Hundreds Of Hospitals Struggle To Improve Patient Satisfaction, which also had a 4 minute air on National Public Radio.

The report notes the growing importance of patient satisfaction surveys, driving in large part by the prospects of pay levels from Medicare and some private insurers.

Since Medicare began requiring hospitals to collect information about patient satisfaction and report it to the government in 2007, these patient surveys have grown in influence.  For the past three years, the federal government has considered survey results when setting pay levels for hospitals. Some private insurers do as well.

Read the article in full and search for hospital patient satisfaction survey results.

Hospitals randomly survey former patients to learn about the quality of their stays. These surveys are collected and information from them is published by the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which also uses the results when setting Medicare pay rates.

Follow the link to the article above and use the imbedded tool to see how patients rated hospitals across the country on 11 topics and how each hospital compares with state and national averages. These scores reflect responses from patients who were discharged between January 2013 and December 2013. They include responses from adult patients and are not restricted to those on Medicare.