Date of Conferral

2023

Degree

Doctor of Healthcare Administration (D.H.A.)

School

Management

Advisor

Matt Frederiksen-England

Abstract

Patient satisfaction has been utilized to measure healthcare quality and outcomes, which affects reimbursement. Some claim such measures could be biased as they do not consider the patient’s socioeconomic status. Measuring the quality of care, Area Deprivation Index (ADI), and patient experience has been captured and publicly reported; and the measuring indicator Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCHAPS), however, hospitals serving patients in low ADI areas generally score poorly. Grounded in the theory of Donabedian, the purpose of this quantitative correlational study was to examine the relationship between patient experience associated with socioeconomic disparities and how patients preserve their quality of care in Alabama. The research questions evaluated if there was a relationship between ADI zones in Alabama acute care hospitals and how patients responded to HCAHPS questions regarding nurse communication, physician communication, and if the patient recommended the hospital. Results were generated using data from the 2019 ADI scores and HCAHPS survey scores from 2020-2021. Using a t-test, the data showed there was no statistically significant relationship between ADI and HCAHPS when it came to patients understanding communications from the nurse and physicians, and neither with recommendation of the hospital. Additional research would explore multiple years of data to evaluate for a significant relationship between the variables. Positive social change may arise from these findings if administrators focus on socioeconomic disparities in low ADI by seeking to improve both physician and nurse communication with patients combined. Doing so would increase hospital reimbursement and the patient experience.

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