Faulty patient satisfaction reporting may tempt hospitalist programs to game the system

Press Ganey is a survey firm used by many hospitalist programs to measure patient satisfaction. Erik DeLue, MD, writing in Today’s Hospitalist, explains a little quirk in Press Ganey reporting:

A quick lesson in Press Ganey, the most-used ranking system for patient satisfaction surveys, demonstrates how “good” can be so bad. On the survey, it turns out that a “very good” ranking translates to an absolute score of 100%, while a “good” corresponds to an absolute score of 80%—and puts a physician with that relative ranking in the bottom 1%. Myself, well, there have been times where I am sure the likes of Dr. Kevorkian would outscore me, this even with an absolute score that would make my parents proud.

Read the rest here.