Press Ganey: "Gap Widens in Hospital Patient Satisfaction -- Hospitals Committed to Service Excellence Improve While Nationally, Satisfaction Declines

From a press release on prnewswire.com:

SOUTH BEND, Ind., May 3 /PRNewswire/ -- The gap in patient satisfaction
is widening between hospitals that deliver exemplary patient service and
those that provide lower levels of care. Press Ganey Associates Inc., which
measures health care satisfaction across thousands of health care delivery
organizations, captured the disquieting trend in its 2006 Health Care
Satisfaction Report, which includes data from more than 2.2 million
patients who had inpatient stays at nearly 1,600 U.S. hospitals.

According to Press Ganey data, hospitals, emergency departments,
physicians' offices and other health care facilities have shown significant
improvement over the past several years, directly opposite the trends in
health care at large. The hospitals with the greatest commitment to
improvement averaged a 2.7 mean score increase over the past year despite
the national decline in health care satisfaction.

"The American Consumer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) from the University of
Michigan has shown that consumers' satisfaction with health care has
decreased significantly over the past several years," says Melvin F. Hall,
Ph.D., president and chief executive officer of Press Ganey. "Hospitals
that partner with Press Ganey to continually measure and improve patient
satisfaction challenge that trend."

Press Ganey data confirms what many health care policy experts have
been saying about health care -- the landscape presents a lot of mediocrity
with pockets of excellence and very poor care. Patients receiving care at
health care facilities in the upper 90th percentile of Press Ganey's
database almost never report "very poor" or "poor" care while patients at
health care facilities in the 10th percentile report "very poor" or "poor"
care with far greater frequency.