Penn Wharton Budget Model: The Unintended Consequences of Linking Patient Satisfaction Scores to Physician Pay (colonoscopy, prescriptions)

[SkyDog77]

https://budgetmodel.wharton.upenn.ed...-physician-pay

While the dataset sample size restricts drawing broad conclusions, the analysis finds that:

1) younger, female physicians tend to receive lower scores; in particular, early-career female physicians score on average 10.2 percentage points lower than early-career male physicians on a commonly used patient satisfaction metric;

2) higher rates of prescriptions of narcotics, benzodiazepines, and stimulants are correlated with higher scores; for example, a one percentage point increase in the prescription rate of stimulants is correlated with a 0.66 percentage point increase in the patient satisfaction metric; and

3) patient compliance with screenings (colonoscopies and mammograms) is correlated with higher patient satisfaction scores; an increase of one percentage point in the percentage of a physician’s patients who are up-to-date with their colonoscopy screenings is correlated with a 0.2 percentage point increase in the patient satisfaction metric.