GRINCH Index: Measuring Patient Satisfaction During Christmas Holiday Gift Programs

Receiving gifts, especially during the Christmas festivities, is a common experience for healthcare providers. Gift-giving, being a spontaneous expression of gratitude, could enable the assessment of true patient satisfaction.

In this study we used the Gifts Received durINg Christmas Holidays (GRINCH) as a potential index of patient satisfaction.

GRINCH is an Italian national survey that started on 13 December 2022 and lasted until 6 January 2023. Fifty dermatologists, equally divided between males and females working in university hospitals, general hospitals, or private or public offices and covering almost all the Italian regions participated in data collection. The participants were asked to fill out a structured data sheet collecting the type and the estimated gift value, the demographic characteristics of the patient, and the type of condition that led the patient to seek medical attention.

A total of 659 gifts were recorded during the study period. The mean ratio of gifts/dermatologist, GRINCH index, was 13.7. Notably, the Grinch index increased as the dermatologists' ages increased in both sexes, and the same trend was confirmed by the data concerning the doctors' number of years of professional activity. We observed a greater mean GRINCH value in male dermatologists compared to their female colleagues. Patients with chronic diseases were more prone to gifting; those affected by psoriasis, atopic dermatitis, or acne showed above-average GRINCH values. However, this finding seems unrelated to the dermatologist's field of expertise.

Overall, these data strongly underline the importance of the doctor-patient relationship. A structured and prolonged mutual knowledge determines a trustful relationship that appears to be one of the fundamental bases of patient satisfaction.