Mixed results

More hospitals get high marks, but the average patient satisfaction score is unchanged

Published December 30, 2016 by Robert Powell, III

Virginia hospitals saw mixed results in the most recent nationwide patient satisfaction survey.

The number of hospitals getting high scores on the survey is rising, but the overall average for more than 80 facilities remains unchanged.

Those are some of the trends found in the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems from the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. The Virginia results were provided by Virginia Health Information, a Richmond-based nonprofit, which also recently released “service line” information showing the volume of patients discharged by hospitals in 2015 for various treatments.

The patient satisfaction survey, conducted from January through December 2015, asks patients to rate their hospital experiences. First, they are asked to grade hospitals on a 10-point scale, with “9 or 10” being the highest score. Then patients were asked whether they would recommend hospitals to friends and family. The most positive response was “Yes, Definitely.”

At least 80 percent of patients gave six Virginia hospitals high praise on both questions in 2015. By comparison, only three hospitals had met that mark in 2014.

Statewide, however, the average percentage of patients giving hospitals high scores on both questions was 70 percent. While that figure has improved from 64 percent since 2009, the 2015 percentage remained unchanged from 2014.

Nationally, the 2015 patient satisfaction average was 72 percent, up one percentage point from 2014. Virginia’s satisfaction rate has trailed the national rate every year since 2009.

The Virginia hospitals getting high satisfaction ratings on both survey questions from 80 percent or more of their patients in 2015 were: Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington, Sentara Princess Anne Hospital in Virginia Beach, Sentara Leigh Hospital in Norfolk, Haymarket Medical Center in Prince William County, Sentara Williamsburg Regional Medical Center and Riverside Doctors’ Hospital Williamsburg.

Four other hospitals had high satisfaction ratings from 80 percent or more of their patients on one of the survey questions. They were Carilion Giles Community Hospital in Pearisburg, Sentara Martha Jefferson Hospital in Charlottesville and Inova Fair Oaks and Inova Fairfax hospitals in Northern Virginia.

The satisfaction rates for all Virginia acute-care hospitals are listed on the following pages.

This section also includes the latest service line information from VHI. The data offer a snapshot of the market share that hospitals hold for various treatments in their regions.

Inova Fairfax Hospital, for example, accounted for more than 50 percent of the oncology patients discharged in Northern Virginia in 2015. On the other hand, Sentara Norfolk General Hospital and Sentara Princess Anne Hospital were virtually tied in the percentage of Hampton Roads obstetrics/delivery patients they served, 14.5 percent vs. 14.4 percent.

Editor's note: The Top Hospitals service lines report includes only nine months of discharges and not the full calendar year.  The shorter timeframe, from Jan.1 through Sept. 30, 2015, is related to a change in official system of assigning codes to diagnoses and procedures in the United States.

The International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-9-CM) was replaced by the ICD-10-CM coding system effective with discharges on and after Oct. 1, 2015.  Because of the increased detail of the ICD-10-CM system, data that VHI uses for its service lines report had significant differences in volume.  While these differences are not errors, for comparability, VHI chose to include only the nine months of 2015 discharges before ICD-10-CM went into effect.

Hospital satisfaction rates 2015

Service Line Charts

More service line charts are available at  VHI’s website, www.vhi.org. The website also provides additional information on hospitals, physicians, health insurance, HMOs and nursing facilities.