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Patient satisfaction is increasingly measured as a way to assess health plans and systems and sometimes to reward physicians. However, the relationship of satisfaction to conventional measures of clinical quality is unclear and may actually be inverse. In this prospective cohort study, a nationally representative database of in-person interviews was linked with a death registry; more than 34,000 adults (mean age, 48; 58% women) were followed for about 4 years.
Analyses were adjusted for 18 clinical and demographic variables including health insurance status, chronic disease burden, and self-rated health status. Compared to the least satisfied patients, the most satisfied patients had an 8% lower rate of emergency department utilization but a…