Impact of hospital diagnosis-specific quality measures on patients’ experience of hospital care: Evidence from 14 states, 2009-2011

Abstract

In order to assess consistency across quality measures for Untied States hospitals, this paper uses patient responses to the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey for three years (2009-2011) from 1,333 acute-care hospitals in fourteen states to analyze patterns in hospital-reported patient experience-of-care scores by diagnosis-specific process and outcome measures for acute myocardial infarction, heart failure, and pneumonia. We also evaluate how scores have changed over the three-year period. We find significant differences in patient experience-of-care scores for 195 out of 230 relationships between HCAHPS patient experience-of-care scores and 23 diagnosis-specific process and outcomes measures. We find nearly no significant differences in changes in scores from 2009-2011 (8 out of 230) when comparing the same experience-of-care and diagnosis-specific quality measures. For the majority of measures, high scores on the quality metrics were associated with high patient experience-of-care scores.