Abstract 3849: Do cancer patients with better quality of life report higher satisfaction with the quality of care they receive
Authors: Gupta Digant , Grutsch James F. , Rodeghier Mark , Lis Christopher G. 
Published: May 2015

Background: Patient satisfaction with quality of care is being increasingly recognized and reported as an important outcome measure in oncology. However, it has been argued by some that patients with greater satisfaction with care quality might be the ones with better self-reported quality of life (QoL). In other words, patient satisfaction has been simply purported to be a marker of underlying patient QoL. We asked the question if cancer patients who report higher satisfaction with quality of their care are indeed the ones with better QoL.

Methods: 6,914 returning cancer patients treated at four Cancer Treatment Centers of America® hospitals completed a patient satisfaction survey between July 2011 and March 2013. All patients who had not responded to a service quality questionnaire within the preceding 60 days of treatment were eligible. Overall QoL (How would you rate your overall health during the last week?) was measured on a 7-point Likert scale ranging from “very poor” to “excellent”. Overall patient satisfaction (“considering everything, how satisfied are you with your overall experience?”) was also measured on a 7-point Likert scale ranging from “completely dissatisfied” to “completely satisfied”. Spearman correlation was used to investigate the association between patient satisfaction and QoL.

Results: A total of 8,642 eligible cancer patients were contacted to participate in the survey. 6,914 patients responded. As a result, the response rate for this study was 80%. The median time duration between the date first seen and the date of first survey was 7.5 months. The mean age at the time of survey was 56.6 years. 4,116 patients were newly diagnosed while 2,798 had been previously treated. 2,778 were males and 4,136 were females. The most common cancer types were breast (27.6%), prostate (13.3%), lung (11.3%), colorectal (8.9%) and pancreas (5.2%). 20%, 28%, 24% and 28% patients had stage I, II, III and IV disease respectively. 1,916 (27.7%) patients reported “excellent” QoL while 5,553 (80.3%) patients were “completely satisfied” with their care. Spearman correlation coefficient between QoL and patient satisfaction for the entire patient population was 0.20 (p&lt;0.001). These correlations in different patient subgroups were as follows: males (0.21), females (0.20), early-stage disease (0.19), late-stage disease (0.22), newly diagnosed (0.19), previously treated (0.20), breast (0.17), colorectal (0.24), lung (0.23), pancreas (0.18), prostate (0.20); with p &lt;0.001 for all.

Conclusions: Self-reported QoL has a low correlation with patient satisfaction with care quality. Contrary to what one might expect, higher levels of self-reported QoL do not translate into higher satisfaction with oncology care. This analysis shows that self-reported QoL and satisfaction with care are weakly related dimensions of the larger cancer care quality umbrella.

Citation Format: Digant Gupta, James F. Grutsch, Mark Rodeghier, Christopher G. Lis. Do cancer patients with better quality of life report higher satisfaction with the quality of care they receive. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 105th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2014 Apr 5-9; San Diego, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2014;74(19 Suppl):Abstract nr 3849. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2014-3849