Is patient satisfaction lower when physicians deny requests for services?

What: An observational study of outpatients visiting a family physician at an academic health center

Why: To examine associations between clinician denial of patient requests (e.g. for services or medication) and patient satisfaction.

Why This Is Interesting: Physician evaluations and compensation increasingly depend on measures of patient experience and satisfaction. Physician denial of patient requests may be the right thing to do medically but lead patients to report low satisfaction, penalizing their physician.

Results: Denials of patient requests for referrals, pain medication, other new medication and laboratory tests were associated with worse patient satisfaction with the physician.

Authors: Anthony Jerant, M.D., of the University of California Davis School of Medicine, Sacramento, and coauthors

Related Material: An Editor's Note by JAMA Internal Medicine Associate Editor Joseph S. Ross, M.D., M.H.S., of the Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut

More information:
jamanetwork.com/journals/jamai … ainternmed.2017.6611

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