Consumers' Use of HCAHPS Ratings and Word‐of‐Mouth in Hospital Choice

Abstract

Objective. To investigate the impact of the HCAHPS report of patient experiences and word-of-mouth narratives on consumers' hospital choice. Data Sources. Online consumer research panel of U.S. adults ages 18 and older. Study Design/Data Collection/Extraction Methods. In an experiment, 309 consumers were randomly assigned to see positive or negative information about a hospital in two modalities: HCAHPS graphs and a relative's narrative e-mail. Then they indicated their intentions to choose the hospital for elective surgery. Principal Findings. A simple, one-paragraph e-mail and 10 HCAHPS graphs had similar impacts on consumers' hospital choice. When information was inconsistent between the HCAHPS data and e-mail narrative, one modality attenuated the other's effect on hospital choice. Conclusions. The findings illustrate the power of anecdotal narratives, suggesting that policy makers should consider how HCAHPS data can be affected by word-of-mouth communication. Key Words. Patient satisfaction, hospital choice, HCAHPS, word-of-mouth communicationHealth policy advocates argue that supplying consumers with publicly available information about provider quality will induce better, more informed choices. Despite significant investments in collecting, analyzing, and reporting quality data, it remains unclear whether people will use it to choose health care providers. Assessments of quality data utilization by consumers have yielded mixed results. For example, HealthGrades reported that 40 percent of health care consumers considered a hospital's quality rating when choosing among alternative providers (Landro 2004). But other studies indicate that most consumers either remain unaware of publicly available health quality data or fail to fully utilize it

Patients' Perspectives of Care and Surgical Outcomes in Michigan

“…18 Previous studies have demonstrated that hospital choice is less influenced by comparative quality metrics, but more so by word of mouth and anecdotal evidence. 19, 20 Additionally, the interpretation of quality metrics is highly variable with age, literacy and knowledge of healthcare having huge implications for choice. 21 The importance of hospital choice for major operations obligates the surgical community to improve delivery and sharpen the focus of hospital quality metrics.…”

From the closest observers of patient care: a thematic analysis of online narrative reviews of hospitals

“…Narrative online hospital reviews provide a relatively popular and novel source of quality information from and for patients, [13][14][15][16][17][18] and represent what patients value and observe about care when not offered structured prompts. Furthermore, the perspectives of friends and family members are increasingly being recognised as important to patient outcomes, [19][20][21] but are not captured in patient-only surveys such as HCAHPS.…”

Comparison of Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems patient satisfaction scores for specialty hospitals and general medical hospitals: Confounding effect of survey response rate

“…At an institutional level, scores are used as a tool to identify and improve deficiencies in care delivery. Additionally, HCAHPS survey data results have been analyzed in numerous research studies …”