Background: Patient satisfaction surveys have taken increased importance over the last years, and data is increasingly used to rate and compare hospitals. Studies that analyzed the association between patient satisfaction and reviews with quality outcomes and hospital ratings have yielded conflicting results. We sought to analyze how HCAPS ratings and internet reviews correlated with hospital ratings.
Methods: From February 1st, 2023, to October 3rd, 2023, we queried quality and safety ratings and patient satisfaction scores for all the acute care hospitals using the American Hospital Directory Database. We searched: Leapfrog Hospitals®, Hospital Compare ®(HC), US News® (USN), Healthgrades® (HG), and Google®. Leapfrog assigns a safety grade from A (highest) to F. HC scores hospitals by Stars (5 – highest- to 1), and USN ranks hospitals regionally and nationally. Google presents average results of user reviews in one score. Patient satisfaction is reported on a scale of 1-5 (highest) in HC, USN, and Google. We recorded the percentage of patients who rated the hospital 9 or 10 on HG. We used Contingency tables and ANOVA to assess differences between variables and the Spearman correlation factor for correlation strength
Results: 2,384 met the inclusion criteria for our study. Patient satisfaction scores were for HC 3.09(±0.79), USN 3.01 (±0.8), and HG 68.21(±7.77), while Google Reviews was 3.13 (0.67). We found a very weak correlation between Google Reviews and HC 0.17[0.13-0.21], USN 0.14[0.1-0.18], and HG 0.28[0.25-0.32] (All P < 0.001). There were very strong correlations between HC -USN 0.75[0.73-0.77], HC-HG 0.76[0.74-0.77], and USN-HG 0.75[0.73-0.76] (All P < 0.001) We then analyzed experience scores and their associations with Leapfrog ratings, HC ratings, and USN rank. Using a One-way ANOVA test, we found significant differences between all Leapfrog, HC, and HG rating categories and USN between ranked and non-ranked hospitals (all P< 0.001). All the scores are presented in the Table below.
Conclusions: In our study of acute care hospitals, we found that higher quality and safety ratings and online Google reviews were associated with increased patient satisfaction scores. These findings seem to validate the idea that patients’ perception of their care correlates with better quality and safety.
