It's not you, It's me: The influence of patient and surgeon gender on patient satisfaction scores

Abstract

Background: Surgeons face the unique challenge of being responsible for both clinical encounters and surgical outcomes. We aim to explore how patient evaluations of surgeons may be influenced by patient and provider factors.

Methods: Patient responses from the 2016 CGCAHPS survey at a single institution were identified. A Poisson regression model was used to identify patient/provider factors associated with ratings.

Results: 11,007 surveys of 134 surgeons were included. After adjustment, higher overall surgeon ratings were associated with older patient age (p < 0.001) and male patient gender (p = 0.001). Lower ratings were associated with higher patient education (p < 0.001) and lower patient self-health ratings (p < 0.001). Although female surgeons tended to have higher communication scores, overall scores did not differ based on any surgeon factors.

Conclusions: Patient satisfaction scores of surgeons are more closely correlated with patient variables than surgeon factors. This may have implications for physician performance evaluation in value-based care models.

Keywords: Gender; Patient satisfaction; Patient survey; Surgeon ratings.