Background: Patient satisfaction has always been an area of focus for hospitals, but gained particular importance due to the changes in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement policies. Hospital managers and clinicians interact with patients in different ways and have different perspectives on safety culture, yet little is known about how that impacts patient satisfaction.Objective: To examine how the agreement between clinicians and management perspectives on patient safety culture is related to patient satisfaction by employing cross-sectional design with linear regressions.Methods: Two data sets were used: 2012 Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture and 2012 Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS). The dependent variables were: overall rating of the hospital experience and willingness to recommend a hospital. The independent variables were four safety culture domains: communication openness, feedback, and communication about errors, teamwork within units, and teamwork between units.Results: The results suggest that manager and clinician agreement on high levels of communication openness, feedback and communication about errors, teamwork between units, and teamwork across units were positively and significantly associated with overall patient satisfaction and willingness to recommend. Additionally, more favorable perceptions about patient safety culture by only clinicians yielded similar findings.Conclusions: For policymakers, measuring managers and clinicians’ perceptions on patient safety culture may provide a valuable indicator of patient satisfaction throughout the country. While managers are more likely to have the power to devote resources to patient safety initiatives, they may not adequately judge culture in their unit and should take into account the perspectives of clinicians who have a more frontline perspective.
A cross-sectional survey on patient safety culture among healthcare providers in the Upper East region of Ghana
