In a period of drastic change for the U.S. healthcare system, an increasing emphasis has been placed on patient satisfaction when determining physician performance evaluations and -- more recently -- reimbursement, according to Dr. Luke Ginocchio of the New York University School of Medicine.
There is a relative paucity of studies in the literature regarding patient satisfaction in radiology, a field that has a unique form of patient interaction, Ginocchio said. Patients generally do not select the specific radiologist providing their care and rarely interact with actual radiologists during their imaging encounters.
Given the potential effects of these evaluation metrics, the researchers sought to identify the specific factors most strongly influencing patient satisfaction in radiology. After using a public ratings website to assess how radiologists were faring in terms of patient satisfaction, they found that satisfaction scores were highly correlated across ratings categories, suggesting a halo effect influencing patients' global perceptions of radiologists, Ginocchio said.
"This emphasizes the importance for radiologists to recognize facility-related, as well as radiologist-related, factors impacting patients' impressions and online public ratings of radiologists," Ginocchio told AuntMinnie.com. "Given this tendency for patients to associate their perception of a practice with that of an individual radiologist, we feel it is incumbent upon radiologists to take additional actions to increase their own visibility to their patients. Regardless of radiologists' individual perceptions of such online ratings websites, the reality is that they will be evaluated in this manner moving forward, and it will behoove radiologists to embrace this phenomenon and take measures to ensure their success in such ratings systems."
How can radiologists do this? Get some tips by attending this talk.
