Determinants of patient satisfaction with ophthalmic services

Abstract

BackgroundThis cross-sectional study was conducted during summer 2008 at an academic ophthalmic hospital to assess patient satisfaction with care services and examine the impact of different dimensions on overall satisfaction.FindingsClients of ophthalmic services were selected by systematic random sampling. Overall satisfaction was measured as the primary outcome using a validated patient satisfaction questionnaire (PSQ-18). Different domains were evaluated using PSQ-18 (technical quality, interpersonal manner, communication, financial aspects, time spent for patients, convenience and accessibility); an additional domain, physical setting of the hospital, was evaluated by complementary questions. A general linear model was used to assess the adjusted impact of each quality dimension on the overall satisfaction. Accessibility and technical quality had the strongest association with the overall satisfaction. This regression model could predict an overall satisfaction of 60%.ConclusionsIn comparable settings, if care providers wish to improve the quality of health services from a patients' perspective, they should give priority to improving accessibility and technical quality. Further studies are recommended to discover complementary predictors in formation of overall satisfaction.Previous publicationSome parts of this article are translated form Farsi originally published in Bina Journal of Ophthalmology. (2009; 14 (3): 289-297). The original work is at: http://binajournal.org/index.php/bina/article/view/96.

Untitled

“…Some answers in this subscale could be skewed because the kind of medical examination was not taken into account. HCQ in this subscale was assessed as poor when compared with studies by Nordyk et al (19), Ziaei et al (20). However, patient mean age in Nordyk´s study was higher than in our study.…”

“…Patient satisfaction found in the subscale time spent with Dentist was lower than in studies by Ziaei et al (20), Chander et al (7), Holikatti et al (8). However, in our sample patients declared the highest level of satisfaction right in this subscale.…”

Satisfaction of patients attending a rural hospital of Darjeeling district in West Bengal, India

“…In a study conducted in Labbafinejad Hospital (Tehran, Iran) in 2008, patient satisfaction with ophthalmic services was reported to be 71%, and the main cause of dissatisfaction was poor technical quality and access to physician. 8 In another study performed in 2009, patient satisfaction with medical services offered at the general hospitals of Isfahan University of Medical Sciences (Isfahan, Iran) was reported to be 56%, and the subscale accounting for the lowest score was doctor-patient communication .It is found from the studies that doctor-patient relationship is the most significant parameter affecting patient's satisfaction out of all other health care staff and services.…”

“…10 In a study conducted in Tehran among patients with ophthalmic services, accessibility and technical quality had the strongest association with overall satisfaction. 8 Another study conducted by Chakraborty et al in 2015 in the urban area of Siliguri found the mean score of 3.81 in general satisfaction domain and 3.48 in the domain of time spent with doctor. 9 Patient satisfaction has been evaluated in several studies in different clinical settings.…”

Inpatients’ and outpatients’ satisfaction: The mediating role of perceived quality of physical and social environment

“…Specifically, it should be noted that what is common in studies that address the influence of both physical and social dimensions (see also Andaleeb et al, 2007;Gotlieb, 2002;Pilpel, 1996;Ziaei et al, 2011) is that normally perceptions of caregivers explain the larger part of variance of patients' satisfaction, but that the physical environment also has a statistically significant positive impact.…”