Veterans Health Administration Inpatient Satisfaction by Race

The Veterans' Health Administration health system is known for the consistent and high-level of care it is able to provide to American military veterans. Like any exemplary organization, it routinely monitors its performance in order to maintain very high standards for health outomes and patient satisfaction. Summary data on many of these recent efforts is available on Data.gov. Much of this information is summarized measures by VHA facility, which are organizaed in what the VHA calls VISNs. Each VISN may have one or more facilities under its umbrella.

The data is available in .csv format, making it easy to use in many analytical tools. For the following visualization we used the VHA_Facility_Quality_and_Safety_Report_Patient_Satisfaction.csv, which reports on overall inpatient satisfaction, stratified by race.

The Tableau visualization presents a dot plot of average satisfaction score reported for each facility in the dataset, with separate dots for each race.  The facilities are listed in descending order by the average score reported for inpatient satisfaction among surveyed African-American patients.  This relates to the major findings of the source survey, which found significantly different satisfaction ratings among African-Americans when compared to White patients and others.  African-American patients were found to be generally less satisfied with their inpatient experience.  The ordered list includes the state and VISN dimensions and for filtering on them as a way of drilling down to ask further questions, such as what is the distribution of satisfaction ratings within a state where more than one facility exists.  The visualization makes it possible to quickly focus on one or more VISNs and to see whether satisfaction varied by state within a VISN. 

The visualization also marks the average, and 2nd throiugh 3rd quartile ranges for the faciltiies included.  Therefore, when the facilities list is filtered these measures change as well.

The accompanying report includes a detailed discussion of the findings on patient satisfaction, starting on page 15.  It should help explain the context for the wide range of average patient satisfaction ratings and differences by race that this visualization highlights.  The context includes the complexity of care offered at each facility, regional, cultural, and even faith-based norms and expectations of the served populations.

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