[Patient satisfaction in 4 hospitals of the Basque Health Service]. / Satisfacción de los usuarios de 4 hospitales del Servicio Vasco de Salud.

OBJECTIVES: To compare patient satisfaction in 4 acute hospitals. METHODS: The sample was composed of individuals admitted to 4 hospitals in the Basque Health Service (Osakidetza, Spain) in January and February 2002. Six hundred and fifty patients were selected from each hospital and were sent a satisfaction questionnaire composed of 34 items summarized in 6 factors. Independent scores for each factor were created. Sociodemographic variables, those related to admission, as well as some global questions and the average scores of the factors were compared among the 4 hospitals. RESULTS: Differences between the 4 hospitals were found in age, the number of previous admissions, type of service, length of hospital stay, and the questions evaluating satisfaction with waiting time between users' arrival at the hospital and admission. Although the degree of satisfaction was high, differences were detected depending on the factor and the hospital. Thus, "information", "dealings with staff" and "comfort" were rated more highly by users of hospital 3 than by those of hospital 1. The results observed in the univariate analysis changed only slightly in the multivariate models. CONCLUSIONS: The questionnaire used allowed comparable results to be obtained among the 4 hospitals participating in this study and identified areas of excellence and areas requiring improvement in each of the centers.

Predictors of patient satisfaction with hospital health care.

BACKGROUND: We used a validated inpatient satisfaction questionnaire to evaluate the health care received by patients admitted to several hospitals. This questionnaire was factored into distinct domains, creating a score for each to assist in the analysis. We evaluated possible predictors of patient satisfaction in relation to socio-demographic variables, history of admission, and survey logistics. METHODS: Cross-sectional study of patients discharged from four acute care general hospitals. Random sample of 650 discharged patients from the medical and surgical wards of each hospital during February and March 2002. A total of 1,910 patients responded to the questionnaire (73.5%). Patient satisfaction was measured by a validated questionnaire with six domains: information, human care, comfort, visiting, intimacy, and cleanliness. Each domain was scored from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating higher levels of patient satisfaction. RESULTS: In the univariate analysis, age was related to all domains except visiting; gender to comfort, visiting, and intimacy; level of education to comfort and cleanliness; marital status to information, human care, intimacy, and cleanliness; length of hospital stay to visiting and cleanliness, and previous admissions to human care, comfort, and cleanliness. The timing of the response to the mailing and who completed the questionnaire were related to all variables except visiting and cleanliness. Multivariate analysis confirmed in most cases the previous findings and added additional correlations for level of education (visiting and intimacy) and marital status (comfort and visiting). CONCLUSION: These results confirm the varying importance of some socio-demographic variables and length of stay, previous admission, the timing of response to the questionnaire, and who completed the questionnaire on some aspects of patient satisfaction after hospitalization. All these variables should be considered when evaluating patient satisfaction.

Development and validation of an in-patient satisfaction questionnaire.

OBJECTIVE: To develop a psychometrically sound, hospital patient satisfaction questionnaire to be administered to patients discharged from medical and surgical services. DESIGN: Cross-sectional survey in Spanish. SETTING: Four acute care general hospitals of the Basque Health Service. STUDY PARTICIPANTS: Random samples of 650 discharged patients from each hospital during February and March 2002. A total of 1910 patients responded to the questionnaire (73.5%). MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Overall perceived quality of health care and perceived health improvement. RESULTS: No sociodemographic differences were found between respondents and non-respondents. Six dimensions were identified from the factor analysis, explaining 50% of the variance. All items, except two, revealed loadings above 0.4. Cronbach's alpha exceeded 0.7 for all dimensions, except privacy. Comfort was the dimension with the lowest level of patient satisfaction, whereas privacy was the most satisfactory. The interscale correlations never exceeded the internal consistency of each scale. The analysis of the dimensions with two items of global assessment showed a positive correlation. CONCLUSIONS: The results obtained from the development and validation of the questionnaire provide evidence of its psychometric properties, although it would be useful to carry out further analyses to assess time-based properties of reliability. We found a positive relation between the degree of patient satisfaction and overall evaluation of the quality of health care, providing evidence of the ability of the questionnaire to correlate with other concepts. The in-patient satisfaction questionnaire could become a useful instrument in quality-of-care assessment.