A study published in Spine examined the patient characteristics that could impact satisfaction scores at spine clinics.
The researchers examined 200 patients over a seven-month period, following up within three weeks of a new encounter with a spine provider. The researchers found:
1. The factors associated with lower provider satisfaction, overall visit satisfaction and perceived overall quality of care include younger age, less formal education and smoking.
2. The male patients were significantly less satisfied with clinical visits when compared with female patients, according to the report.
3. Worker's compensation patients were significantly less satisfied with their provider and overall quality of care.
4. The factors that weren't significantly associated with lower patient satisfaction include:
• Marital status
• Working status
• Mental health history
• Travel distance
• Pain characteristics
• Previous treatments
• Current narcotic use
5. Providers can use this information to account for sampling bias as they're increasingly assessed for patient satisfaction as part of quality of care.
"This information is important to providers by helping guide individualized patient interactions while in clinic, as well as the various agencies collection satisfaction scores allowing them to account for potential sampling bias," concluded the study authors.