Effects of surgical wound types, pain levels and length of stay on the CAHPS^® hospital survey

Research has shown that patient perception is critical in improving clinical outcomes and should be measured in addition to the standard quality and safety metrics. Therefore, better explaining and understanding patient perception has become regulatory. Evidence shows that patient perception can be affected by their condition and characteristics such as age, sex, education etc. In such cases, the evaluation descrenpency may not reflect the difference in the quality of service between hospitals. To the best of our knowledge, this work is the first to study the effcts of surgical wound types on patient perception. We perform ordered logistic regression and find that patients with more contaminated wound types, more severe pain and longer stay tend to give more negative evaluations. Further patient-mix adjustment is required to make valid comparison among hospitals, especially for surgery-centric ones.