Hospice Glassdoor and CAHPS® Scores—Glassdoor Scores and Hospice Financial Characteristics Predict Hospice Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems Scores

Background: Recent public data transparency on both decedent caregiver satisfaction and employee satisfaction is impacting the three most essential needs of any hospice, admitting hospice enrollees, attracting hospice professionals and delivering on quality. Aim: Explore the relationship between Glassdoor hospice employee recommendation data, hospice financial characteristics, and Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS®) scores among the 50 largest US hospices. Design: Retrospective data with multivariate regression analysis. Data Sources: Provider CAHPS hospice survey data from 2019-2020 and Glassdoor employee recommendation data. Results: Glassdoor Composite and CAHPS Composite were positively correlated (r = .469, p < .01). Glassdoor scores, profit status, and acquisition status predicted Hospice CAHPS scores and explained 44% of the variation in CAHPS Composite. Being a large, for-profit hospice in acquisition status each predicted lower CAHPS scores. Non-profit hospices had significantly higher Glassdoor and CAHPS scores than for-profit hospices. CAHPS Composite and CAHPS Star Rating have potential as global indicators to inform customers of a given hospice’s overall quality on the Hospice Compare website of CMS. Conclusions: Hospice leaders seeking improvements in CAHPS scores are encouraged to seek feedback on whether their own employees would recommend their hospice to a friend. Communication and responsiveness were the strongest indicators of overall hospice quality. Skelton hospice staffing models must give way to realistic models that value company culture and employee satisfaction. Hospice quality and hospice profits are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Future research should explore the difference in themes emerging from positive and negative online caregiver reviews.