The application of “the patient satisfaction assessment” as a method for assessing hospital management efficency

Abstract

Introduction. When assessing the effectiveness of hospital management through measures of patient satisfaction, it is pos­sible to go beyond the frameworks of the social efficiency assessment, obtaining generalized assessments of an institution. They are based on the answers to the question if patients would be willing to recommend the institution to a member of the family or a friend. Next point is establishing correlation relationships between these assessments and other measures of effectiveness, for example the value of contracts concluded with the National Health Fund (NFZ). 

Aim. The aim of the article is to determine the usefulness of the patient satisfaction survey as a method enabling the assessment of the management efficiency of a given medical facility in terms of the selected parameters. 

Material and methods. The source of the research material are the reports on the patient satisfaction assessments carried out among the patients of the Provincial Specialist Hospital in Biała Podlaska in the years 2008-2013. It was hypothesized that the higher the value of the contract with the NFZ, the greater patients’ satisfaction expressed in their generalized assessments in the given years and, on the contrary, the more positively assessed by patients hospital, among other things due to the quality of the health services, the higher the value of contracts concluded with the NFZ by the given institution. At the same time, on the basis of the data from 2013, it was decided to check whether the opinions expressed by the patients are characterized by objectivism or whether they may be dependent on the hospital ward where the satisfaction survey was carried out - for this purpose the Chi-square independence test was used. The necessary calculations as the part of the statistical analysis were made using the Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. 

Results and discussion. The results of the research are a part of the general trend of patient satisfaction surveys, considered as an important source of information on the level of medical services. 

Conclusions. The patient satisfaction survey can be considered as a method which enables the assessment of the management efficiency of a given medical facility in terms of the selected parameters.