Campus Location

Dallas Campus (Online)

Date of Award

12-2021

Document Type

Dissertation

Department

Organizational Leadership

Degree Name

Doctor of Education

Committee Chair or Primary Advisor

Cecilia Hegamin-Younger

Second Committee Member or Secondary Advisor

Jaime Goff

Third Committee Member or Committee Reader

Katherine Yeager

Abstract

In this quantitative study, I investigated CEO gender and the patient experience in acute care hospitals in Texas for 2019. As the patient-experience has been the metric for quality patient care and hospital reimbursements, hospital CEOs play an important role in promoting positive patient experience as they lead the organization in strategic goals. The study is relevant as a shortage of experienced and qualified healthcare leaders is expected as baby-boomers retire. The lack of women leaders remains a challenging issue. The purpose of the study was to assess the gender differences of the CEO on the impact of patient experience scores in Texas acute care hospitals and examine the role of hospital characteristics on the patient experience in relation to CEO gender. The sample consisted of 211 hospitals that reported HCAHPS patient survey results to the Center of Medicare and Medicaid Services for 2019. Using a series of t tests and regression models, eight patient experience scores, CEO gender, and hospital characteristics—hospital ownership, hospital location, teaching status, and size, this study examined the relationship between patient experience scores and CEO gender, the relationship between hospital characteristics and CEO gender, and the effect of hospital characteristics on hospital CEO gender and the patient experience. The framework supports the occupational challenges women face at the executive level, specifically the CEO role. The analysis indicated CEO gender was not directly significantly associated with the patient experience. Hospital characteristics except for hospital size were not significantly associated with patient experience. The hospital size and the interaction term (product of gender and hospital size) was a significant predictor of the patient experience. Based on the results of the interaction term, the study concluded that female CEOs were associated with higher patient experience scores in larger hospitals.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Share

COinS
 
 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.