Impact of hospital characteristics on patients’ experience of hospital care: Evidence from 14 states, 2009-2011

• Published in: Patient experience journal Vol. 2; no. 2; pp. 109 - 124
• Main Authors: Johnston, Emily M., Johnston, Kenton J, Bae, Jaeyong, Hockenberry, Jason M., Avgar, Ariel C, Milstein, Arnold, Liu, Sandra S., Wilson, Ira, Becker, Edmund
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: The Beryl Institute 12-11-2015
• Subjects: affordable care act; hcahps; hospital quality of care; patient hospital experience; patient satisfaction; value-based purchasing
• ISSN: 2372-0247; 2372-0247
• DOI: 10.35680/2372-0247.1089

This paper uses patient responses to the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey for three years (2009-2011) from 1,333 acute-care hospitals in fourteen states to analyze patterns in 10 hospital-reported patient experience-of-care scores by 29 characteristics classified as: patient characteristics, payer source, patient severity, hospital characteristics, hospital operations, and market characteristics. We also evaluate how scores have changed over the three-year period. We find significant differences in patient experience-of-care scores by hospital characteristics for 250 out of 290 HCAHPS-hospital characteristic combinations measured. We find fewer significant differences in changes in scores from 2009-2011 (135 out of 290), with hospitals categorized as high scoring also reporting consistently greater improvement. We conclude that patient experience-of-care scores vary by hospital characteristics, although improvements in scores show less variety by hospital categorization.