Patient Satisfaction with Outpatient Primary Health Care in a Metropolitan Medical Center

Age was found to be the most important sociodemographic characteristic of patients affecting their satisfaction with the encounter; having positive expectations of the encounter had more effect on subsequent satisfaction ratings than other social psychological variables studied here.

Abstract

This paper presents rates and correlates of patient satisfaction with primary care in a New York medical center. Over an eight-week period, we studied only first-time, "workup" encounters. Patient satisfaction was measured with three scales and one single-item measure. The highest rates of satisfaction were registered in relation to (1) the encounter in general, followed by (2) doctor conduct and (3) convenience. Four sets of independent variables were studied: sociodemographic variables, social psychological antecedent variables, other patient characteristics, and physician characteristics. Age was found to be the most important sociodemographic characteristic of patients affecting their satisfaction with the encounter; having positive expectations of the encounter had more effect on subsequent satisfaction ratings than other social psychological variables studied here. When each of the satisfaction measures was regressed on the sets of independent variables, the proportion of variance explained changed, as did the relative contribution of the different independent variables. We discuss the importance of studying patient satisfaction with specific medical encounters, along with the findings of our study.