<p>Does physician engagement affect satisfaction of patients or resident physicians?</p>

Abstract

Purpose: This study examined whether change in physician engagement affected outpatient or resident physician satisfaction using common US measures. Methods: Surveys were administered by Advisory Board Survey Solutions for staff physician engagement, Press Ganey for Clinician and Group Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CGCAHPS) for outpatient satisfaction, and Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) for the ACGME Resident/Fellow Survey. Survey sample sizes were 685, 697, and 763 for physician engagement and 621, 625, and 618 for resident satisfaction in 2014–2016, respectively; only respondents were available for CGCAHPS (24,302, 34,328, and 43,100 for 2014–2016, respectively). Two groups were analyzed across 3 years: (1) percentage of “engaged” staff physicians versus percentage of outpatient top box scores for physician communication, and (2) percentage of “engaged” staff physicians versus percentage of residents “positive” on program evaluation. For resident evaluation of faculty, the number of programs that met/exceeded ACGME national compliance scores were compared. Univariate chi-squared tests compared data between 2014, 2015, and 2016. Results: For 2014–2016, “engaged” physicians increased from 34% (169/497) to 44% (227/515) to 48% (260/542) ( P <0.001) whereas CGCAHPS top box scores for physician communication remained unchanged at 90.9% (22,091/24,302), 90.8% (31,088/34,328), and 90.9% (39,178/43,100) ( P =0.869). For the second group, “engaged” physicians increased from 33% (204/617) to 46% (318/692) to 50% (351/701) ( P <0.001) and residents “positive” on program evaluation increased from 86% (534/618) in 2014 to 89% (556/624) in 2015 and 89% (550/615) in 2016 ( P =0.174). The number of specialties that met/exceeded national compliance for all five faculty evaluation items grew from 44% (11/25) in 2014 to 68% (17/25) in 2015 and 64% (16/25) in 2016 ( P =0.182). Conclusion: For our medical group, improvement in physician engagement across time did not coincide with meaningful change in the outpatient experience with physician communication or resident satisfaction with program and faculty.

Exploring physician engagement in health care organizations: a scoping review

“…Increasing importance was attached to the physicians’ ability to use real-time dashboards displaying data metrics and appreciate how they affect clinical, financial, and operational issues in organizational performance [ 76 ]. Some studies were categorized as “other/unclear” ( n = 12; 6.9%) since we were unable to pinpoint a specific form of engagement [ 63 , 77 – 80 ] or it was not specified [ 41 , 48 , 81 ]. Several studies examined particular types of engagement that fell outside our categories, such as a novel program involving a physician quality officer [ 82 ] or the engagement of frontline physicians as supply chain managers [ 83 , 84 ].…”

“…Owens and colleagues (2017) used HealthStream surveys to create nationally representative databases and statistically validated surveys for benchmarking physician engagement [ 50 ]. In their longitudinal study, Scher et al [ 48 ] used the Advisory Board Survey Solution (ABSS), with a dataset of over 55,000 physicians who expected to remain in their own organization (avoiding bias of those expecting to leave) and scored the responses to four categories of items: “engaged” was linked to the category of “doctors highly loyal and committed to the organization”; “not engaged” was related to the categories “content” (satisfied but no extra effort to help the organization succeed), “ambivalent” (not invested in the organization), and “disengaged” (actively unhappy with the organization). Other proxy indicators for engagement were first-year turnover, sick time utilization, and workplace injuries or quality-related metrics like hand-hygiene compliance [ 99 ].…”

Pediatric Faculty Engagement and Associated Areas of Worklife After a COVID19 Surge

“…4 Many survey tools and definitions have noted that a physician who is fulfilled, dedicated, and satisfied with their work is likely to be more engaged. 2,23,32,33,[39][40][41] However, many surveys evaluating levels of physician engagement do not include the context in which these physicians work, which may lead to challenges with interpreting and generalizing data for use at other organizations. 39 We believe one of the strengths of this study is that we were able to measure faculty engagement in the context of faculty worklife environment.…”