Patient Satisfaction Measurement in OEM

CME/MOC: 1.0
TRACK: Management and Administration in OEM

Douglas Wayne Martin, MD, FACOEM, FAAFP, FIAIME, Unity Point Clinic – St. Luke’s Occupational Medicine, Sioux City, IA
Glenn Pransky, MD, MOccH, FACOEM, Liberty Mutual Research Institute, Hopkinton, MA
Matthew S. Thiese, PhD, MSPH, Rocky Mountain Center for Occupational and Environmental Health, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT

Patient satisfaction measures are increasingly used to evaluate and improve quality in all types of medical practices. With these tools, it is important that they be appropriately designed for the practice and adequately tested to ensure that they reflect and promote quality care and do not create financial incentives that may lead to lower quality or excessive medical care. The unique aspects of OEM practice require development of OEMspecific measures and thoughtful interpretation of results. Several unique features of OEM practice (work status as a primary outcome, potential conflicts between employer and patient interests, medico-legal context of work injuries; performance of regulatory examinations, and others) create OEM-specific concerns which imply a need for an OEM-specific approach to patient satisfaction assessment. This session will review the background, development, and current status of the ACOEM Patient Satisfaction Survey Tool. This session was organized by the Private Practice in Occupational Medicine Special Interest Section.