Coyne and Messina Articles: Part 3 - Spearman Coefficient Review

Coyne and Messina Articles: Part 3 – Spearman Coefficient Review
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July 13, 2017
Introduction
In this ever growing world, where the demand for better quality healthcare increases as technological innovations make methods and materials cheaper and more affordable for everyone, patient satisfaction has become one of the forefront topic. Perhaps one of the main reasons why patient satisfaction is becoming more emphasized today is the rise of “value-based care”, which emphasizes on the quality of the services provided for the patients rather than the quantity of medical attention CITATION Fro15 \l 1033 (Bendix, 2015). In line with this, the authors of the paper in focus, did a research to find out if there exist a correlation between the perceived patient satisfaction and the number of patients admitted in hospitals CITATION Mes09 \l 1033 (Messina, Scotti, Driscoll, Ganey, & Zipp, 2009). More specifically, they tried to assess these variables between teaching and non-teaching hospitals. Towards the conclusion of their paper, the authors realized that patient volume and patient satisfaction ratings have a “statistically significant and positive correlation” for teaching hospitals but not for non-teaching ones (negative correlation). According to them, the reason for this variation of statistical significance is a function of financial performance. And since both admission volume and patient satisfaction leads towards the business oriented aims of a teaching facility, a positive correlation was established. In spite of the fact that the author of this paper strongly agrees with both the methods and the conclusion posed by Messina et al., an analysis of the variables and methods utilized in the study would be done to further this.
Variables
The data for the author’s study was taken from 1999 to 20003. During this five-year period data taken from seven teaching and seven non-teaching hospitals which are surveyed by Press Ganey and Associates at the state of New Jersey were opened to other parties for study and analysis. In terms of sample selection, the researchers tried to widen their focus by choosing patient records from PGA hospitals in different regions (North, Central, and South region) of the state, and making sure that demographic diversity (income levels, insurance coverage, age, etc.) is observed during the sample selection process CITATION Mes09 \l 1033 (Messina, Scotti, Driscoll, Ganey, & Zipp, 2009). As for the process of colleting patient satisfaction data, the researchers procured from the previous records of each hospitals, since most of them are required to hand out a “patient satisfaction forms” and “discharge surveys”.
With regards to the sample selection method of the researchers, it is apparent that proper sampling procedure was done ...