Emergency department personnel accuracy at estimating patient satisfaction

We investigated the congruence between emergency department (ED) personnel estimations of patient satisfaction and actual patient satisfaction. Actual patient satisfaction was assessed via telephone interview. Before the find ings were disseminated, ED personnel were asked to "predict" the results by estimating the average rating they believed patients gave for each of the 22 indicators. Surveys were obtained from 478 of 1,139 (42.1%) patients and 59 of 76 (77.6 %) ED personnel. ED personnel consistently estimated averag e satisfaction scores to be significantly lower than what patients actually reported across 19 of the 22 indicators. ED personnel grossly overestimate d average patient length of stay (LOS) (5.7 h vs. 3.5 h actual). Results su ggest that ED personnel consistently estimated patients to be less satisfie d than they actually were across multiple domains. Moreover, ED personnel e stimated average LOS to be more than 2 h longer than patients' actual LOS, Hypotheses for why this bias occurred are discussed. (C) 2000 Elsevier Scie nce Inc.