Geisinger Health System Offers Dissatisfied Patients a Refund

Spine and bariatric surgery now comes with a refund. Geisinger Health System is taking a bold approach to patient satisfaction. In a consumer driven market, many industries aim to please their consumers to ensure continued business, even if that means a refund. Many healthcare executives view the healthcare industry to be the exception to this business model. Although healthcare providers are becoming increasingly aware of the importance of patient satisfaction as result of the Medicare Value Based Purchasing Scores, many agree that refunds for unhappy patients are not the proper protocol. However, Dr. David Feinberg, President of Geisinger Health System, has a different opinion.

At the 2015 Press Ganey Executive Leadership Conference, Dr. David Feinberg argued, “the way I see it, if you go into Starbucks and you're not happy with your order, they don't sip your latte and argue they made it correctly. They just take care of you on the spot. This is about patient care, people taking care of people. We want to get it right every time with every patient.” Feinberg wants to treat his patients as valued customers. With a strong will to find a solution to re-focusing healthcare on providing quality care to those in need, Feinberg is offering to refund copays for dissatisfied patients of spine and bariatric surgery.

Geisinger Health System is launching a refund program for those patients who feel they were not met with “kindness and compassion”. Surgery patients will be able to use an app developed by Geisinger Health to rate their experience using a sliding scale. Patients are encouraged to offer feedback about their experience whether it is positive or negative. Those who are dissatisfied with their experience are able to request a partial or full refund of their copay. Patients for spinal procedures can receive a refund up to $1,000, and bariatric surgery patients can receive a refund up to $2,000. Patients will be able to use the app to determine their refund amount, which is dependent on their copay amount. Feinberg stated that the refund will be processed within three to five business days.

With this new approach in place, Feinberg does admit, “I don't know if a money-back guarantee or warranty is the right way to do it, but I do know if we don't figure out how to do it, somebody else is going to do it." It will be interesting to see if this new strategy will help increase patient satisfaction ratings in the Geisinger Health System.

Definitive Healthcare is actively tracking 956 hospital networks, one of them being Geisinger Health System. Definitive further breaks this system down by its affiliated hospitals and their patient satisfaction ratings. Definitive tracks an array of patient satisfaction measures including the following measures: communication with nurses and doctors, pain management, noise level, responsiveness of staff, and care transition. These individual measures are then averaged together to form the HCAHPS Summary Star Rating, which serves as an overview of patient satisfaction within a facility.

With an average of a 3 Star Summary Rating, the hospitals affiliated with Geisinger Health System have some room for improvement. It will be interesting to see if this new refund program will help to improve patient satisfaction scores within the Geisinger Health System. With money at stake, one may think this is a dangerous plan to improve patient satisfaction, as the patients are the ones deciding the refund amount. Feinberg believes that patients won’t abuse this new refund program but rather “stick to the honor system”.

With many fearful of the outcome of this new approach, Fienberg recognizes that his strategy of placing a warranty on healthcare treatment and refunding money is extreme. However, he also recognizes that this may be revolutionary for the healthcare industry. In addition to tracking HCAHPS, Value Based Purchasing Scores, readmission rates, and hospital acquired conditions, one may wonder if we will be monitoring patient refunds in the near future too.

Definitive Healthcare has the most up-to-date, comprehensive and integrated data on hospitals, health systems, physicians and other healthcare providers.  Our hospitals database tracks numerous quality metrics, including readmission and complication rates, patient satisfaction ratings, process of care and structural measures, and more.