A Study on the Patient Satisfaction Survey at the General Hospitals in Korea

국내 종합병원 환자만족도 조사현황 분석

Background : It is increasing the concern for patient satisfaction as a customer information. This study was planned to investigate the activities related to patient satisfaction survey at the Korean hospitals. Methods : We performed the nationwide survey on 235 general hospitals by using the self-administrated checklist from Sep. 9 to Oct. 9, 1996. The response rate were 50.2%. We analyzed the descriptive statistics and chi-square test by SAS software on 118 hospitals. Results : First of all, 62.7% of study hospitals showed to conduct the patient satisfaction survey, and most of hospitals which did not conduct it had a plan to do it within 5 years. The reason that hospitals did not conduct satisfaction survey was due to a lack of administrator's interest or adequate questionnaire form. Second, the bigger, public and being more located in the big city or opened more than 10 years, the more hospitals conducted the patient satisfaction survey. Also, patient satisfaction survey was mainly handled by planning dept. or administrative team. Third, most hospitals had their own way of making questionnaires without proving reliability and validity. The results of the survey were applied to hospital management timely, and were mostly reported to top manager level. Most CEO concerned about the results of satisfaction survey. Fourth, the staffs in charge of survey had problems such as skill related to data analysis and development of questionnaire and they suggested that this problems could be solved through inducing the implementation of the survey results on hospital management, support for the development of standardized questionnaires and increasing the top manager's interests. Fifth, most questionnaires composed of lots of questioning items on hospital equipments and environment, and kindness of hospital employee to patients. Conclusions : Although this study had some limitations in generalization due to low response rate in big hospitals, it is meaningful to find the present state and the problems related to patient satisfaction survey of the general hospitals. We can conclude that there are increasing the concern for patient satisfaction survey among the hospitals nationwide, and it can be needed for technical support related to development of survey tool or method.