The relationship between patient satisfaction with physical therapy care and global rating of change reported by patients receiving worker's compensation

Abstract

This study examined relationships between patient satisfaction with physical therapy care and global rating of change; 1,944 respondents completed the Medrisk Instrument for Measuring Patient Satisfaction with Physical Therapy Care (MR-12) and a nine-point Global Rating of Change Scale (GROC) following a course of physical therapy for a work-related musculoskeletal problem. Ninety percent of all respondents reported being satisfied or very satisfied with their overall care, whereas 70.1% of all respondents indicated they improved following treatment. Respondents who reported improvement had significantly higher scores for all measures of satisfaction (p<0.01) than did those who reported failure to improve; however, both of these groups had mean scores of greater than 4.0 on the MR-12, indicating that respondents were likely to be satisfied or very satisfied with care regardless of perceived change following treatment. Scores>4.0 from the MR-12 had high sensitivity to detect those respondents classified as “improved” (0.87–0.95), but low specificity to differentiate between those who were classified as “improved” and those who were classified as “did not improve” (0.22–0.30). Our findings support the hypothesis that patient satisfaction with care is primarily independent of perceived clinical change.