Are We Truly Measuring Patient Satisfaction?

I was struck by an op-ed piece I read recently in the New York Times. The author, Theresa Brown, RN, in her piece entitled Hospitals Aren't Hotels, opines that we set unrealistic goals in medical treatment when  patient satisfaction scores are the primary measure of success. Is patient satisfaction  always correlated with more expensive or aggressive treatment?  Perhaps we need to redefine satisfaction? Can we shift our model of care from a "doing for" model to a "being with" model and still achieve patient satisfaction? Do we, as Theresa Brown suggests, always need to first hurt in order to heal?

 Lots of food for thought here...would love to hear your comments!

Letting the Patient Call the Shots

Today's New York Times has an interesting article written by Dr. Pauline Chen exploring what we, in the healthcare system, really mean by "patient centered care". Does the definition of patient centered care shift if we are in the role of patient or healthcare professional? In the article, Letting the Patient Call the Shots, Dr. Donald Berwick, president of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement in Cambridge, Massachusetts, suggests that, “ We would all be far better off if we professionals recalibrated our work such that we behaved with patients and families not as hosts in the care system, but as guests in their lives.” Radical changes in our healthcare system will need to occur to allow this to happen, are we ready for such changes? What do you think?