title: Patient-reported experiences with hospitals: comparison of proxy and patient scores using propensity-score matching.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The objective of this study was to compare patient-experience scores between patients with a proxy response and without a proxy response, using propensity-score matching to maximize the comparability between these two groups.
  
  
  METHODS
  Cross-sectional survey.
  
  
  METHODS
  Hospital inpatient services in Norway.
  
  
  METHODS
  Patients were randomly selected from each of the 61 hospitals in Norway during spring 2011. Postal questionnaires were mailed to 23 420 patients after their discharge from hospital.
  
  
  METHODS
  No intervention.
  
  
  METHODS
  All of the patient respondents (n = 8744) and the matched cases (n = 734) were compared with patients with a proxy response (n = 734) on 12 patient-experience indicators using t-tests.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Compared with patient respondents, patients with a proxy response had poorer health, were older and were more often discharged from the hospital to another health-care institution (P < 0.001). Patients with a proxy response yielded significantly lower patient-experience scores than those without a proxy response for 9 of the 12 indicators. Compared with the matched patient group, patients with a proxy response had significantly lower scores for 3 of the 12 indicators and a significantly higher score for one indicator. Differences in scores between patients with a proxy response and the matched patient sample were small, with the largest difference being 4 on a scale of 0-100.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Patients with a proxy response report somewhat poorer experiences than those without a proxy response; however, proxies represent a different patient group than the patient group as a whole, and the results were very similar after controlling for these differences.
authors: Department for Quality Measurement and Patient Safety, Norwegian Knowledge Centre for the Health Services, Boks 7004 St Olavs plass, Oslo 0130, Norway. oan@kunnskapssenteret.no.
authors: Oyvind
authors: O
authors: Bjertnaes
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005260:Female; D006304:Health Status; D006761:Hospitals / Q000592:standards* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009664:Norway / Q000453:epidemiology; D017060:Patient Satisfaction / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D057216:Propensity Score; D019727:Proxy / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: hospital; patient satisfaction; propensity scores; proxy; questionnaire