About Our Ratings

Guide to Patient Satisfaction Surveys and Ratings

At UPMC, our vision is putting our patients, health plan members, employees, and community at the center of everything we do and creating a model that ensures that every patient gets the right care, in the right way, at the right time, every time. We also believe that transparency is critical. We want to help our patients and their families see how we capture the patient experience at UPMC.

About our Patient Satisfaction Surveys

UPMC measures many aspects of our patients' experiences. We work with an independent patient satisfaction company, Press Ganey, to distribute our surveys. For more than 25 years, Press Ganey has been the industry's recognized leader in health care patient satisfaction. Press Ganey works with more than 10,000 health care organizations nationwide, including 50% of all U.S. hospitals, to improve clinical and business results.

Who gets the survey?

Patients treated by UPMC physicians and advanced care providers are randomly chosen to fill out our patient satisfaction surveys. Surveys are sent by email and mail to offer patients a chance to provide feedback about their experience with their provider. Each year, almost 180,000 of UPMC's patients respond. Results are shared with departments and individuals for continuous opportunities to improve care.

What questions do we ask?

The survey is based on outpatient office visits with the patient's physician and advanced practice providers. On behalf of UPMC, Press Ganey administers the Clinician and Group Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CG-CAHPS) survey, developed by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, for use in medical practices across the country. Press Ganey also sends surveys to our other services such as hospital stays for our adult and pediatric patients, but these results are not yet shared online. The surveys ask our patients to measure how well their provider communicated, listened, and showed courtesy and respect toward them. Results are used to evaluate patients' overall perception of care and help us find areas we can improve or recognize our physicians and advanced practice providers.

What does UPMC do with the survey responses?

Survey ratings and patient comments are shared on this website for the benefit of our patients, physicians, and advanced practice providers. At UPMC, we continually look at patients' feedback and ratings to evaluate patients' overall perception of care and help us identify areas we need to improve, or recognize excellent care provided by our providers and staff.

How is an individual's patient satisfaction star rating created?

Star ratings are based on patient responses to six questions about interactions with the provider.

Are all comments posted?

We post all comments from the surveys except for comments that are libelous, slanderous, profane, do not refer to a provider interaction or that may risk the privacy of a patient.

Why aren't there patient ratings and comments for every provider?

This can be for several reasons, including:

• The provider has not yet received the minimum number of patient satisfaction surveys to be eligible for display. At UPMC, we require a minimum of 30 surveys before we post results to ensure that the rating is statistically reliable and a true reflection of patient satisfaction.
• He or she may be a researcher or other type of provider that does not see patients.
• The provider practices in a specialty or office that does not use the specified surveys currently used for these ratings.
• Can anyone fill out a survey or post a comment about a physician or advanced practice provider?
• You must have had an outpatient visit with a UPMC provider to be selected to receive a survey. This ensures that the results are only from patients who have actually been treated by that provider.

How is patient information protected?

Patient names are not displayed through the online ratings and commentary reviews. Commentary reviews containing personally identifiable information are not displayed online.

What other ways is UPMC sharing information transparently with patients?

Launched in 2014, UPMC.com/QualityMeasures displays clinical outcomes for several areas, and new outcomes are added regularly. Visit the site to see how UPMC compares to the national rates in these areas.