Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems: Do Patient Demographics Affect Outcomes in Total Hip Arthroplasty?

The Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) score is a nationally standardized measure of a patient’s hospital experience. This study aims to assess whether HCAHPS scores vary by demographic or surgical factors in patients undergoing primary total hip arthroplasty.

Patients who completed an HCAHPS survey after a primary total hip arthroplasty between October 2011 and November 2016 were included in this study. Patient demographics and surgical factors were evaluated for correlations with individual HCAHPS questions.

One thousand three hundred eighty-three HCAHPS questionnaires were reviewed for this study. Patients with a submitted HCAHPS response had an average age of 63.83 ± 10.17 years. Gender distribution was biased toward females at 57.27% (792 females) versus 42.73% (591 males). The average body mass index (BMI) was 28.68 ± 5.86 kg/m ². Race distribution was predominantly Caucasian at 81.49% (1127 patients), followed by “unknown” at 8.60% (119 patients) and African-American at 8.46% (117 patients). Home discharge occurred for 93.06% (1287 patients) versus 6.94% for facility discharge (96 patients). Mean length of stay was 2.41 ± 1.17 days. Each 1-year increase in age was positively correlated with a 0.16% increase in top-box response rate (β = 0.0016 ± 0.0008; P < .05). Male gender was correlated with a 4.61% increase in top-box response rate when compared to female gender (β = 0.0461 ± 0.0118; P < .01). BMI was found to be correlated with a 0.20% increase in HCAHPS response rates for each 1 kg/m ² increase (β = 0.0020 ± 0.0010; P < .05). For each day increase in length of stay, HCAHPS top-box response rates decrease by 3.41% (β = −0.0341 ± 0.0051; P < .0001). Race, marital status, smoking status, insurance type, and discharge disposition were not found to be significantly correlated with HCAHPS top-box response rate ( P > .05).

The HCAHPS quality measurement metric affects physician reimbursement and may be biased by a number of variables including sex, length of stay, and BMI, rather than a true reflection of the quality of their hospital experience. Further research is warranted to determine whether HCAHPS scores are an appropriate measure of the quality of care received.