Determinants of Patient Satisfaction in Home Health

HCAI 5220 & HCAI 5221Silvana Vela

Fall 2012Trinity University

What am I doing?

• I want to determine if therapy services (physical, occupations, or speech therapy) and medication management responses are indicators of overall patient satisfaction of a home health agency.

• Data is gathered from The Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems Home Health Care Survey (HH-CAHPS).

Why is it interesting?

• The Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems Home Health Care Survey (HH-CAHPS) is designed to measure the experiences of people receiving home health care from Medicare-certified home health care agencies. The survey consists of 29 questions. • Patients are randomly selected from all patients who

have had two or more visits from the home health agency in the past two months. • Home health agencies are not allowed to pick which

patients get the survey.

Why is it interesting? cont.• A family member or friend may fill out the survey for a

patient who is physically or mentally unable to do the survey.• Home health agencies use organizations trained by the

Federal government to survey patients. These organizations send the survey by mail, call patients on the phone, or use a combination of both. • The purpose of the survey is to:

“Empower Americans with quality of care information to help them make more informed decisions about their health care and stimulate and support providers and clinicians to improve the quality of health care.” (Medicare.gov)

Here’s what I have so far…

• I’m analyzing 2 months data with a total of 32 patients. All the patients answered the same 29 questions.• I’m looking at four questions in particular for

independent variables:• In the last 2 months of care, was one of your home

health providers from this agency a physical, occupational, or speech therapist?• In the last 2 months of care, did home health providers

from this agency talk with you about the purpose for taking your new or changed prescription medicines?

Here’s what I have so far…(cont.)• In the last 2 months of care, did home health providers

from this agency talk with you about when to take these medicines?• In the last 2 months of care, did home health providers

from this agency talk with you about the side effects of these medicines?• Available data are qualitative variables since answers

fall into “yes” “no” “missing/dk”• The survey data only provides a count of respondents

and percentage of them who answered “yes” “no” “missing/dk”

Problems• There are no numerical value or numerical score attached

to the answers.• Example:

In the last 2 months of care, was one of your home health providers from this agency a physical, occupational, or speech therapist?

Count Percent Description

9 60% Yes

5 33% No

1 7% Missing/DK

Total: 15 100%

Problems (cont.)

• Is there a way to convert such answers to numerical values?• Regarding medication management: there are 3

questions in the survey that target this issue. Thus, should I use all answers in these three questions to sum up for one independent variable: medication management, is this possible? Wouldn’t the data of these 3 questions have an impact with values gathered for therapy services?

Your feedback/comments/suggestions is greatly appreciated!