The combined effects of participatory styles of elderly patients and their physicians on satisfaction.
OBJECTIVE
To test whether concordance or discordance of patient participation between patients and physicians is associated with higher satisfaction, and to examine the effects of patients' and physicians' participatory styles on patients' satisfaction with their physicians.


METHODS
Data collected in the Texas Tech 5000 Survey of elderly patients in West Texas were used. Patient satisfaction with their physicians was measured by a single item from the Consumer Assessment of Health Plans (CAHPS), representing patients' ratings of their physicians. Patient participation was measured by an index derived from a three-item instrument and physicians' participatory decision-making (PDM) style was measured by a three-item instrument developed by the Medical Outcomes Study.


METHODS
An ordered logit multivariate regression was used to investigate the effects of patients' and physicians' participatory styles on satisfaction with physicians. The interaction between patients' participation and physicians' participatory styles was also included to examine the dependency of the two variables.


RESULTS
Controlling for confounding factors, a higher PDM score was associated with a higher rating of patient satisfaction with physicians. A higher patient participation score was related to a lower physician satisfaction rating. The combined effect of patients' and physicians' participation styles indicated that for a low patient participation score, a high PDM score was not needed to produce high satisfaction. The greater the discordance in this direction, the higher the satisfaction. However, with a high patient participation score, only an extremely high PDM score would produce relatively high satisfaction.


CONCLUSIONS
The current study supports the discordance hypothesis. Participatory physicians and patient-physician communications concerning patient participation can promote higher satisfaction.
Xu
K Tom
KT
Division of Health Services Research, Department of Family and Community medicine, Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, Lubbock, TX 79430, USA.
D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D005260:Female; D006302:Health Services Research; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D010358:Patient Participation; D017060:Patient Satisfaction / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations; D013781:Texas