Press takes care to distinguish between patient satisfaction and a positive medical outcome.
Medical schools may have incredible equipment and incredible physicians, but they also have a lot of amateur nurses and amateur doctors. A patient in a teaching hospital is more likely to be treated as a specimen. The professor of anthropology also is president of Press, Ganey Associates, the nation's leading research firm specializing in patient-satisfaction measurement. Begun 10 years ago by Press and Notre Dame associate professional specialist Rod Ganey, the firm has amassed a national patient-satisfaction data base from more than a million and a half surveys administered at more than 500 hospitals. The quality of a hospital's nursing staff, Press found, is the most important variable affecting patient satisfaction.