The aim of the study conducted by Kennedy, Trevis, and Kent correlated with the research question and was the following: are there connections between measures of patient satisfaction and favorable health outcomes? The sample of the study includes 171 hospitals that offered data through the University HealthSystem Consortium (UHC) database. The researchers collected information from the UHC database to acquire data on the adult population that was discharged by general surgeons. Patient satisfaction rates were later taken out from the database to separate patient outcomes after surgery from the UHC (Kennedy et al., 2014). Hospital environments and the quality of care play an important role in determining patient satisfaction.
As a result of data collection, it was revealed that hospitals with high operative volumes had high overall patient satisfaction. Variables integrated into data analysis included the characteristics of hospitals, surgical outcomes, and compliance with process measures. Notably, such aspects as indicators of patient safety, adherence to process measures, and the length of hospital stays did not influence the overall rates of patient satisfaction. Also, increased rates of readmissions and the occurrence of post-surgical complications did not influence patient satisfaction. The low mortality index showed to be consistently associated with increased satisfaction. Through the use of chi-squared analysis, the scholars evaluated variables linked to high rates of patient satisfaction. The described data analysis method was used because it allows determining whether there is a statistically significant difference between observed frequencies in one or several categories (Patten, 2017). The research is relevant to the discussion of patient satisfaction and health outcomes because it illustrates how hospitals may change their environments and care quality to improve both variables.
References
Kennedy, G. D., Tevis, S. E., & Kent, K. C. (2014). Is there a relationship between patient satisfaction and favorable outcomes? Annals of Surgery, 260(4), 592-600.
Patten, M. (2017). Understanding research methods (10th ed.). Abington, UK: Routledge.