Abstract
Purpose :
In recent years, following the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 and the “pay-for-performance” reimbursement plans it has incentivized, patient satisfaction surveys have been increasingly used to measure health care provider performance, and as a result, have become a source of stress for providers. In order to better elucidate how patient characteristics affect satisfaction scores, we performed a prospective survey-based study to assess patient determinants of Press Ganey scores following refractive surgery.
Methods :
Patients who had refractive surgery completed a survey of selected questions from the Press Ganey survey and the National Eye Institute Visual Function Questionnaire-25 following their clinic visit. Correlation between patient-specific variables and survey questions were assessed using Student’s t tests.
Results :
Fifty-three patients were recruited over a three-year period. Most were male (55%) and middle-aged (mean age 53 years). Eleven percent underwent PRK surgery while the rest had LASIK, with 0% complications. Thirteen percent of surveyed patients reported mild-moderate eye pain in the days post-surgery, with the rest reporting no pain. All patients reported a full score for overall satisfaction.
Conclusions :
Our study found persistent high patient satisfaction score across a variation of characteristics, suggesting that optimal scores are mainstay after refractive surgery procedures with excellent visual outcomes, independent of patient clinical and sociodemographic characteristics.
This abstract was presented at the 2023 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in New Orleans, LA, April 23-27, 2023.