Assessment of Customer Satisfaction with the Clinical Laboratory Services Provided in King Abdullah Medical City, Makkah

Abstract

Background: Patients and physicians are considered primary customers of laboratory services. Therefore, assessing customer satisfaction with laboratory services is an essential indicator in improving the quality of laboratory services. Objectives: This study measures the level of satisfaction of physicians and patients who avail of the clinical laboratory and phlebotomy services, respectively, at the outpatient department (OPD) in King Abdullah Medical City (KAMC), to evaluate the possible issues and carry out corrective actions. Methods: A cross-sectional survey to evaluate the level of satisfaction using a modified patient and physician questionnaires, the patients were randomly selected and interviewed in phlebotomy areas at the outpatient and chemotherapy clinics. A paper-based questionnaires were distributed to all physicians all available physicians in KAMC who were regularly requiring laboratory investigations. The collected data were coded, entered, and checked for outliers or missing data and analyzed using the SPSS statistical package version 21. Results: A total of 435 patients were interviewed and their mean satisfaction was 4.51±0.32 out of 5. Respondents were satisfied with the Availability of laboratory tests. However, they were dissatisfied with Explanation of the phlebotomy cautions by the phlebotomist (75.4%). Twenty eight percent of physicians (132) participated, their mean satisfaction rate was 3.6±0.7 out of 5. The greatest satisfaction rate was related to critical results notification and the communication with laboratory personnel. Physicians were most dissatisfied with both specimen delivery process and incorrect test results. Conclusion: Both customers were satisfied with the laboratory service provided for them. Factors as "Explanation of the phlebotomy process by phlebotomist" and "specimen collection and delivery process" received lowest satisfaction score for patients and physicians respectively. Therefore, improving them is required to meet the needs of the customers and gain their satisfaction regarding the service.

Patient Satisfaction with Health Care Services; An Application of Physician’s Behavior as a Moderator

“…For instance, the predictor variable, healthcare service laboratory and diagnostic care, are positively and significantly associated with the predicted variable of patient satisfaction. The findings from this research support a previous study highlighting the assessment of customer satisfaction with the clinical laboratory services provided in King Abdullah Medical City, Makkah [67]. Furthermore, the outcomes of preventive healthcare and prenatal care have a positive and significant association to patient satisfaction.…”

“…This study adopted a 10-items laboratory and diagnostic care (LDC) scale from Almatrafi et al [67]. An example item for LDC is “Accessibility of phlebotomy room?” The alpha coefficient was 0.79 for this scale.…”

Assessment of Clinicians’ Satisfaction With Laboratories at a Public Sector Hospital in Karachi, Pakistan

“…The overall satisfaction in our study was 69.1%, which was lower than the CAP Q-probes study in which the mean overall satisfaction score was 82% (4.1/5) [5]. Our satisfaction percentage was relatively lower than in the study conducted by Almatrafi et al [7] in King Abdullah Medical City, Makkah, that was 73% (3.65/5). However, our findings were higher than those of the surveys conducted by Addis et al [8] and Zaini et al [9], in which the satisfaction was 51.5% and 53.3%, respectively.…”

“…In our study, the factor with the highest satisfaction rate was ease of readability of the laboratory reports (3.80). However, clinicians were least satisfied with the abnormal results notification (2.91) as compared to the study carried out by Almatrafi et al [7], which had the highest satisfaction rate for critical results notification (3.8) while the least satisfying factors were specimen collection (3.39) and quality of test results (3.43). The low satisfaction over abnormal tests notification indicates that the pattern on which a report is filed is standardized, but there is a lack of effort in addressing the abnormal test results by laboratory staff.…”

“…Clinical laboratory services are an everyday need for clinicians, and they should be reliable to avoid unnecessary challenges for the clinicians [1]. Several studies have assessed clinicians' level of satisfaction with laboratory services [7-10]. The objective of these studies was to analyze the strengths and limitations of laboratory services to take appropriate action to upgrade the quality of these services.…”