Some of the country’s best doctors have the worst patient satisfaction scores. Here’s why.Part of being a doctor is learning to suppress your feelings. You get good at being what people need you to be. But it slowly transforms you into something you couldn’t have foreseen—a sort of Stepford doctor—pleasing everyone with your perfect smile and agreeable demeanor, hoping that your patient satisfaction survey will be favorable, no matter the cost.
Press Ganey is one of the top providers of patient satisfaction surveys, according to the Forbes article, Why Rating Your Doctor Is Bad For Your Health.The government has bet big on these surveys, as a recent article in Forbesnotes. Armed with the idea that “patient is always right,” Washington figured that more customer satisfaction data “will improve quality of care and reduce costs.”
That turns out to have been a bad bet.
Read the whole thing, but it’s what your doctors, especially the hospital based ones, have been saying since day 1.
