Fuqua School of Business Dean Bill Boulding collaborated with Professor Richard Staelin and alumni Matthew Manary and Seth Glickman to examine how patient experiences correlate with health care quality assessment. Previous research found both positive and negative correlations between patient survey assessments and other quality measures, leading some experts to question the value of patient experience information. In contrast Boulding, Staelin, Glickman and Manary note that in all their studies they find a significant positive association between patient experience and the hospital’s health outcomes. They attribute this to the fact that both parties (e.g., the patient and the health practitioner) are needed to co-create a successful service encounter. This leads them to call for more robust patient-experience surveys that better capture this co-creation. They suggest asking about specific visits rather than general health plans, that include evaluations of the entire care team rather than just the physician, that capture critical communication interactions, and that contact patients within a small window of time after the interaction.
Read more in “The Patient Experience and Health Outcomes” The New England Journal of Medicine