{"id":17933,"date":"2019-05-01T17:45:17","date_gmt":"2019-05-01T22:45:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/feminem.org\/?p=17933"},"modified":"2019-05-01T17:52:14","modified_gmt":"2019-05-01T22:52:14","slug":"patient-survey-satisfaction-scores-are-biased-against-protected-groups","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/feminem.org\/2019\/05\/01\/patient-survey-satisfaction-scores-are-biased-against-protected-groups\/","title":{"rendered":"Patient Survey Satisfaction Scores Are Biased Against Protected Groups"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

We know implicitly that patient satisfaction survey scores are biased against women, doctors of color, and physicians who are foreign-born (or with names that make you think they are.<\/a>) Every single one of us has seen the bias play out in real life \u2014 either as a witness to a colleague who has been the recipient of frank (or subtle) bias or as the recipient ourselves. We are ethically obligated to treat all, regardless of how poorly they treat us.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not a secret. We discuss how to handle explicit patient racism. We discuss what tactics we can take (e.g. wearing the white coat<\/a>, wearing fake glasses and a bun<\/a>, special name tags, acting differently<\/a> and attempting to change our \u201cresting *#&!$ face\u201d<\/a> among others) so that we can overcome this handicap. We are working diligently to improve our own organizations to mitigate against implicit bias and correct systems that perpetuate bias.  Yet, we cannot control the public and we don\u2019t have time (or the ability) to change public biases. Patient satisfaction scores are often measured and reported as percentiles and so very small differences in scores, lead to a huge variation in force-ranked percentiles. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A small body of healthcare-specific research is demonstrating and quantifying the bias in surveys:<\/p>\n\n\n\n