I have been mulling over this thought for some time. For the longest time I have operated under the dictum that healthcare is similar to any other customer service industry. However I think that the pendulum has swung too far where customer service is eclipsing outcomes in the healthcare sector. One could argue that the customer service orientation of healthcare was partly responsible for the opiod epidemic. Now that physicians’ and hospitals’ reimbursements are tied to patient satisfaction surveys, we should re-visit the seminal paper from JAMA that argues that satisfied patients were 26% more likely to die than less satisfied patients: