Inpatient Experience Surveys and Overall Hospital Rating: A Correlation Analysis for a Private Hospital in Central America

Objectives: To validate the use of a patient experience survey composed of the Spanish version of the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey and of questions locally created in our institution, a private hospital in Panama. To identify which domains of our patient experience survey have the strongest association with the overall inpatient hospital experience rating. Methods: A retrospective analysis of 1619 electronic survey results of adult inpatient experience data was performed using exploratory factor and Pearson correlation analyses. The data was collected between March 2018 and December 2019 from a web-survey application, accessible through a link sent by email after hospital discharge. Results: Results from analyses showed that questions grouping occurred under the same domains as the HCAHPS English version (factor loading 0.456 to 0.918) and that a new domain named administrative processes (0.818 to 0.846) arose for the newly created questions. Cronbach's alpha values ranged from 0.32 to 0.85, with an α of0.65 for the new local questions. Correlation analyses were higher for the domains of communication from nurses (0.670) and administrative processes (0.618). Conclusions: Our investigation validates the use of our patient experience survey, composed of questions from the Spanish version of the HCAHPS survey and locally created ones. In our institution, communication from nurses is most correlated with the inpatient hospital experience rating. Hospital administrative processes were also strongly associated with the overall inpatient hospital rating, and we argue that these later aspects should be addressed to improve the patient experience.