Introduction
Patient satisfaction is a highly desirable outcome of clinical care in the hospital and may even be an element of health status itself (1). A patient’s expression of satisfaction or dissatisfaction is a judgment on the quality of hospital care in all of its aspects. Whatever its strengths and limitations, patient satisfaction is an indicator that should be indispensable to the assessment of the quality of care in hospitals.
The word “hospital” comes from the Latin for both “guest” and “host,” and the true spirit of hospitality is at the core of the hospital experience (2). The original mission of hospitals was to serve as houses of mercy, refuge, and dying for pilgrims returning from the Holy Land at the time of the late Christian antiquity (3). The striving to please patients is in harmony with the service calling of medicine and is certainly the right thing to do.
Current Reality
From the patient’s perspective, hospitals can be scary and unfriendly places. The American Hospital Association’s Reality Check (4) evaluated the public’s perceptions of hospitals and hospital care using a time-honored technique of asking focus group participants to imagine that the hospital was an animal and a car. Two out of 3 respondents chose animals that would be seen as aggressive, scary, or lumbering to suggest traits such as arrogance, uncontrolled power, and sluggishness. For cars, no respondent chose the Toyota Camry or any other model that would likely make the Consumer Reports list of best values. Instead, the cars chosen were representatives of unreasonable overpricing, waste, and outdated engineering.
“Imagine that the hospital is …”
A Car
“Volkswagen bus…Old, very noisy, just not a real great car.”
“A Rolls Royce, because of the expense.”
“A Pinto, because it was run down.”
“Ford Escort, just barely passing the test.”
“A Cadillac…big and expensive.”
An Animal
“A bear…a grizzly…horrible.”
“Elephant…large…cumbersome.”
“A leech.…I’m sure all hospitals aren’t that lowly.”
“A snake, kind of slithery and sneaky, because of what hospitals charge.”
The same AHA survey showed that patients felt that insurance companies and not physicians were in charge of their care in the hospital. A follow-up question revealed that patients clearly want to be in charge of their own hospital care. Additionally, patients do not see hospitals as part of a planned or consumer-focused health care system. In fact, they see quite the opposite: a confusing, expensive, unreliable, and often impersonal disassembly of medical professionals and institutions. If they see any system at all, it is one devoted to maximizing profits by blocking access, reducing quality, and limiting spending, all at the expense of the patient.
The American Customer Satisfaction Index (5) gave hospitals an overall 67% satisfaction rating, ranking 27th out of 31 industries. This ranking placed hospitals 10 percentage points below the tobacco industry and just above the Internal Revenue Service. A National Coalition on Health Care survey (6) found that 80% of respondents believe hospitals cut corners to save money, and 77% believe that these cuts have endangered patients. Quality of care and patient safety have become significant public concerns recently. “To Err is Human,” the 1999 report from the Institute of Medicine, highlighted the potential for serious injury and death in U.S. hospitals (7). Estimates are that 44,000 to 98,000 Americans die each year in hospitals as a result of medical errors and unsafe practices.
Patient Satisfaction Is Important
Patient satisfaction is the health care recipient’s reaction to aspects of his or her service experience (8). Patient satisfaction belongs to the service dimension as opposed to the technical dimension of quality of care. Most patients report few problems related to technical quality of care in hospitals and moreover do not feel qualified to judge technical quality and therefore assume technical competence (9).