An approach to exploring associations between hospital structural measures and patient satisfaction by distance-based analysis.

BACKGROUND

Patient satisfaction studies have explored domains of patient satisfaction, the determinants of domains, and score differences of domains by patient/hospital structural measures but reports on the structure of patient satisfaction with respect to similarities among domains are scarce. This study is to explore by distance-based analysis whether similarities among patient-satisfaction domains are influenced by hospital structural measures, and to design a model evaluating relationships between the structure of patient satisfaction and hospital structural measures.

METHODS

The Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems 2012 survey scores and their structural measures from the Hospital Compare website reported adjusted percentages of scale for each hospital. Contingency tables of nine measures and their ratings were designed based on hospital structural measures, followed by three different distance-based analyses - clustering, correspondence analysis, and ordinal multidimensional scaling - for robustness to identify homogenous groups with respect to similarities.

RESULTS

Of 4,677 hospitals, 3,711 (79.3%) met the inclusion criteria and were analyzed. The measures were divided into three groups plus cleanliness. Certain combinations of these groups were shown to be dependent on hospital structural measures. High value ratings for communication and low value ratings for medication explanation, quietness and staff responsiveness were not influenced by hospital structural measures, but the varied-ratings domain group similarities, including items such as global evaluation and pain management, were affected by hospital structural measures.

CONCLUSIONS

Distance-based analysis can reveal the hidden structure of patient satisfaction. This study suggests that hospital structural measures including hospital size, the ability to provide acute surgical treatment, and hospital interest in improving medical care quality are factors which may influence the structure of patient satisfaction.