Health plans, group practices, business coalitions and accreditation organizations use patient satisfaction information to profile medical care and provide feedback to both physicians and health care administrators. This new patient satisfaction comparison service provides a unique opportunity for group practices to easily collect patient satisfaction data and compare their results to those of other practices in their region and nationally. These data are then incorporated into a data warehouse where normative data are supplied to participants. Initial feedback regarding the PSCS has been positive. Michelle Banks, MBA, MHSA, from the University of Alabama Birmingham at Huntsville, says the internal and external benchmarks are what prompted their group to use the software.
Banks also says their physicians are eager to see the survey results.
In the first week of administering the survey, MPPI collected 4,153 completed surveys from patients seeking primary care. By collecting patient satisfaction data, University Physicians Group is able to modify the behavior in both management and patient systems, according to Payne. Future plans for the PSCS are to include other sources of data for comparative purposes. More than 8,300 health care organizations and 21,000 individuals are MGMA members, representing more than 209,000 physicians. HCIA-Sachs collects, manages, and distributes comparative health care information.