Patient satisfaction is a key goal of health-care providers. But a surprising new study has found a happier patient isn’t necessarily a healthier one – despite costing more.
Researchers at the University of California, Davis, tracked nearly 52,000 Americans between 2000 and 2007, for at least two years. They asked study participants how satisfied they were with their health care, monitored the medications the patients took and any care they received at a clinic, doctor's office, hospital or emergency room.
Researchers then tracked study participant’s death rates.

Their findings, reported in the Archives of Internal Medicine: Patients most satisfied with their care tended to take more medicines and spend more time in doctor’s offices and be admitted to a hospital, compared to the least-satisfied patients.
What’s more, the most satisfied patients were more likely to die earlier -- despite the extra health care, drugs and costs – than those least satisfied with their physicians' medical care.
“In a nationally representative sample, higher patient satisfaction was associated with less emergency department use,” they concluded, “but with greater inpatient use, higher overall health care and prescription drug expenditures, and increased mortality.”