Quality of patient experience—the sum of all perceptions, evaluations, and emotions toward a health care system that arise in an individual as a result of interactions with it—is a key metric for measuring the success of a health care system. Two of the many components of patient experience are patient satisfaction and trust in providers. Patient satisfaction is the degree to which an individual’s expectations about health care experiences are met. Trust in providers reflects a patient’s confidence in the ability, reliability, and effectiveness of specific health care professionals. These two elements of patient experience may reflect an individual’s access to health care, influence behaviors, and impact overall health.
The Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey Public Use File (MCBS PUF) provides cross-sectional data on health care access, utilization, and experience among a nationally-representative sample of community-dwelling Medicare beneficiaries. The MCBS PUF includes survey items that can be used to measure two components of patient experience: general patient satisfaction (GPS) and trust in usual physician (TUP). This data highlight demonstrates the internal consistency—how much a set of items are all measuring the same underlying concept—of the GPS and TUP scores in a sample of community-dwelling Medicare beneficiaries aged 65 years and over. In addition, this highlight examines correlates of quality of patient experience as measured by the items related to GPS and TUP, exploring both socio-demographic factors and general health ratings. This is the first MCBS data highlight using the MCBS PUF.