Patient’s satisfaction with quality of care: a tool for health facility auditing

Background: Patients’ perception of services and satisfaction with quality of care is an essential parameter to assessing healthcare system for improvement. However, inadequate discovery of their expectations may result in patient dissatisfaction.
Objective: The objective of this study was to determine patient satisfaction with care received within the health facility and utilize the data to audit services for quality improvement
Methodology: This study was a descriptive cross sectional study involving all patients seen at the adult general out-patient department (GOPD) of Plateau State Specialist Hospital Jos in June 2017. An interviewer administered questionnaire was administered to 370 consenting patients using a systematic random sampling technique.
The Concise Out-patient Department User Satisfaction Scale questionnaire was adapted and used for data collection. The scale evaluate on nine basic items: physical environment, equipment and facilities, appointment arrangement, waiting time, service of the dispensary/pharmacy, support staff, physician’s professionalism and explanation given by the care physician and consultation time.
Results: A total of 370 patients consisting of 167 (45.1%) males and 203 (54.9%) female were enrolled for this study. Among the patients; 239(64.6%) had tertiary education with 122(33.0%) and 135 (36.5%) being civil servants and students respectively. A total of 201 (54.3%) of the patients were married while 138 (37.3%) were single.
One hundred and sixty nine(45.7%) of the patients rated high satisfaction with the facility physical environment and 137(37.1%) with the cleanliness. In terms of waiting time, 138 (37.3%) of the patients were not satisfied.
The respondents rated high satisfaction with the attitude of the health staffs (P= 0.01).
In terms of quality of care, 293 (79.2%) of the patients were not satisfied with the quality of care they received while 76 (20.5%) were fairly satisfied. Three hundred and eighteen (85.9%) of the patients were not sure of coming back to access care in the same facility while 309 (83.5%) were hesitant or not sure of recommending the facility to others for care.
Conclusion: Patients are becoming more aware of global best practices because of information available to them. There is need therefore for managers of public health facilities in conjunction with government to continually evaluate quality improvement in care, understand the expectations of patients so as to improve the quality of life of its citizens.