Press Ganey and HCAHPS as Predictors of Patient Satisfaction in Spine Surgery

Introduction: Recently, there has been increased interest in patient satisfaction measures such as Press Ganey and Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) surveys.This systematic review aims to analyze the available spine surgery literature to evaluate factors predictive of patient satisfaction as measured by these surveys.

Methods: A thorough literature search was performed in PubMed/MEDLINE, Google Scholar, and Cochrane databases. All English-language articles were screened for study inclusion according to PRISMA guidelines.

Results: Twenty-four of the 1,899 published studies were included for qualitative analysis. There has been a statistically significant increase in the number of publications across years (p=0.04). Overall, the studies evaluated the relationship between patient satisfaction and patient demographics (71%), pre- and intra-operative clinical factors (21%), and post-operative factors (33%). Top positive predictors of patient satisfaction were patient and nursing/medical staff relationship (n=4; 17%), physician-patient relationship (n=4; 17%), managerial oversight of received care (n=3; 13%), same sex/ethnicity between patient and physician (n=2; 8%), and older age (n=2; 8%). Top negative predictors of patient satisfaction were high Charlson Comorbidity index/high disability/worse overall health functioning (n=7; 29%), increased length of hospital stay (n=4; 17%), high rating for pain/complications/readmissions (n=4; 17%), and psychosocial factors (n=3; 13%).

Conclusion : There is heterogeneity in terms of different factors, both clinical and non-clinically related, that affect patient satisfaction ratings. More research is warranted to investigate the role of hospital consumer surveys’ ratings in the spine surgical patient population.