Determinants of patient satisfaction with care in a Spanish oncology Day Hospital and its relationship with quality of life

Abstract

Satisfaction with care among cancer patients treated at the day hospital is high. Nurses play a key and successful role. Age and tumour location revealed stronger relationships with SC. Correlations between SC and quality of life indicate that these concepts are complementary.

A systematic review of barriers to optimal outpatient specialist services for individuals with prevalent chronic diseases: what are the unique and common barriers experienced by patients in high income countries?

“…As the most frequently described barrier to outpatient care, difference in service use, levels of need, or satisfaction according to demographic characteristics were reported across all diseases of interest [18, 19, 34, 38, 41, 45, 47, 51, 52, 54, 55, 57, 61, 64, 65, 68, 74, 75, 79, 84, 85, 87–89, 91, 92, 96, 97, 99–103]. Additional barriers resulting from sub-optimal interactions with healthcare teams or non-patient focussed health service organization were commonly reported.…”

“…Common barriers resulting from health service organization or physical structure included: waitlists and appointments delays [32, 33]; poor service availability [33, 52, 55, 58, 63]; difficulties with parking [33, 36, 37, 60, 65, 77, 79]; poor transport options [33, 36, 61, 69]; distance to the outpatient clinic [33, 54, 67]; inability to meet medical fees [32, 47, 49, 61] or prescription costs [32, 49, 83]; inadequate health insurance coverage [19, 39, 47, 55, 75, 83, 87, 98]; and poor service amenities [33, 37, 46, 60, 65, 71, 77, 79, 89]. …”

“…Unique barriers to oncology care included access to or information on accommodation for those who were required to travel for treatment [69]; inadequate consultation time [34, 37, 40, 76, 79]; poor provider availability [37, 39, 55, 89, 95, 79]; professionals’ technical skills or clinical competence [37, 40, 42, 76, 79, 89]; and option to choose their healthcare professional [39, 63]. Cost of illness was reported as a barrier by both oncology and COPD patients [36, 49, 69].…”

“…These barriers include non-clinical aspects of the service’s physical structure, such as difficulties with parking. For patients who must access services for treatment, such as intravenous chemotherapy, parking remains a major issue [33, 36, 37, 60, 65, 77, 79]. For example, within a study of cancer patients in the United Kingdom, parking was rated as the least met need despite being rated as a highly salient [65].…”

“…Inadequate consultation times were also reported as a barrier to oncology outpatient care. Studies using the EORTC OUTPATSAT35 report both physician punctuality and the amount of physician time devoted to the patient were the worst performing subscales and received scores below 70 [79, 89]. Patients identified sufficient time to review all questions regarding disease and treatment and having their physician’s complete attention as being very important when receiving a diagnosis [40].…”