The Impact of a New Internal Medicine Residency Program on Patient Satisfaction Scores for Teaching Hospitalist Faculty Compared to Non-teaching Hospitalist

Introduction: The Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) is a national survey sent to patients to measure their inpatient experience. Graduate medical education programs may affect a sponsoring institution in various ways, but there has been little research into the effect of teaching hospitalist faculty on HCAHPS scores in a community-based hospital. The aim of the current study is to evaluate if the introduction of internal medicine resident physicians would affect the HCAHPS scores of patients admitted by hospitalist faculty physicians. Methods: This was a retrospective analysis of anonymous patient satisfaction survey data for internal medicine hospitalist teams from January 2019 to December 2019. Data were retrieved from the Press Ganey database. We compared two groups: teaching hospitalists (N = 12) and non-teaching hospitalists (N = 34). Data were divided into two time periods: January to June (pre-residents) and July to December (post-residents). Results: From January to June (pre-residents), 646 HCAHPS surveys were returned. For the post-resident cohort (July to December), a total of 487 surveys were returned. The “Recommend” domain, showed a significant improvement in the mean pre-resident to post-resident (57% to 69%; p = 0.0351). Conclusion: There was a significant increase in the mean rating of the “Recommend” hospital domain for the teaching hospitalists when compared to the non-teaching after the addition of a new internal medicine residency program.