Changing US News rankings

[anoncurious]

Hi - I was at an interview recently and the interview mentioned that the new US News rankings would be changing to include patient satisfaction ratings at the various hospitals affiliated with the medical schools..can anyone validate this? If so, I imagine that the rankings would do quite a bit of shuffling. He mentioned some name of a patient satisfaction survey (started with a 'p') but I don't remember.

Also, when do the new rankings come out?

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[alibai3ah]

I think they come out March....not sure, and as for the patient satisfaction.. I never heard about that. But I'm glad they are if it is true, that should certainly be a major factor in these rankings so they are not so skewed towards research oriented schools.

 

[BarefootinDC]

I think they come out March....not sure, and as for the patient satisfaction.. I never heard about that. But I'm glad they are if it is true, that should certainly be a major factor in these rankings so they are not so skewed towards research oriented schools.

Well they do split the rankings into research and primary care, so it makes sense that the research oriented schools should rank higher in research...

 

[MossPoh]

Eh. The only reason you should use these things to begin with is to get a few references points with regards to competitiveness. I don't think the satisfaction rate is going to change much between hospitals. There are way too many factors that go into that. Either way, I'm pretty sure people are going to feel pretty good about MGH versus some podunk community hospital.

 

[anoncurious]

thanks for your responses guys--going back the original post; has anyone heard of this change occuring?

 

[Handyman73]

I haven't heard it, but everyone loves to look at patient satisfaction scores these days. I think the survey you refer to is the "Press-Ganey" Survey.

Survey results are dangerous. They tend to select out unhappy people. And if it hits the news that a facilty gives excellent care, what happens? People flock there and as crowds increase, so do wait times and complaints. Those little podunk hospitals sometimes get great satisfaction scores because they put chocolates on your pillow and have flat screen TVs. But they might not know a lot about fixing you...