Study On Patient Experience And Public Opinion Of Healthcare In China

ObjectiveThe study intends to develop the patient experience measure instrument in China and conduct a systematic and standardized survey of Chinese patient experience.Also,the research tries to explore the frontier methods of public opinion analysis of healthcare services and utilize the method to conduct quantitative analysis of patients experience to provide external reference for the promotion of continuous patient-centered care improvement in medical facilities,furthermore,the study intends to provide evidence-based decision-making basis for policy formulation of the national official medical service supervision departments.Content1.The development of a set of Chinese patient experience measure instruments.It includes the development of patient experience questionnaires and field survey tools based on the internet.2.The distribution of the current status of patient experience in China and its influencing factors.Conduct a nationwide survey of patient experience to understand the current status of patient experience in China.Analyze patient experience distribution differences among medical institutions in different regions and types across the country,analyze patient experience differences in different aspect of healthcare services,study relevant factors affecting patient experience,and explore the key issues from the patient experience survey results.3.The public opinion on healthcare services.From the perspective of infodemiology,an analytical framework will be established to analyze the public’s concerns about healthcare services related topics.Methods1.Development of patient experience measure instruments:definition of research construct and the design of its evaluation framework are based on the retrospective literature study.Identification of critical process in healthcare services and preparation of a survey items pool are based on field study from the medical facilities combined with inductive approach and deductive approach.The final formation of the questionnaires is determined though expert consultation and pilot study.The effectiveness of the questionnaires was evaluated using reliability analysis,validity analysis,and acceptability analysis.2.Cross-sectional study:Select sample hospitals with quota sampling and use convenience sampling to recruit patient survey samples.A descriptive analysis combined with the data visualization method was used in the study of the current status of patient experience.Logistic regression was used to analyze the influence factors.Smooth curve fitting,threshold effect analysis,piecewise linear regression and other methods will also be used for quantitative data analysis,3.Infodemiology research:Using social media data fetching,text content analysis,natural language processing and related technologies to explore the public opinion on healthcare services from social media user data.New research framework and analysis indicators also will be proposed for the exploratory study.Results1.The Chinese Patient Experience Questionnaire for Ambulatory care(CPEQ-A)and Chinese Patient Experience Questionnaire for Inpatient care(CPEQ-I),which included 32 and 28 survey items,were developed as Chinese patient experience evaluation tools.The reliability coefficients of the questionnaires have a general Cronbach’s a of 0.952 and 0.950 respectively.Survey length was about 10 minutes and 8 minutes respectively.The field study electronic survey application based on the mobile Internet also developed.2.On the overall level,average scores of patient experience for outpatient and inpatient services in 136 sample hospitals were 4.37±0.67 points and 4.66±0.51 points.The diagnosis and treatment behavior and humanistic care have a positive and favorite survey results for both outpatient and inpatient experience.3.The patient experience score for environmental facilities and service efficiency of the hospital is relative lower than the other aspects.Waiting time and hospital food have the lowest score of patient experience for outpatient and inpatient respectively.4.The patient experience in western hospitals is far from the gap between eastern and central hospitals.Different types of hospitals have different priority areas for improving patient experience.5.Humanistic care for patient is the most sensitive factor influencing the overall level of patient experience with the odds ratio of 6.06(96%CI:5.51-6.67)for outpatient and 6.75(96%CI:5.91-7.72)for inpatient respectively.6.If the patient registered waits for more than 16 minutes,the waiting time to see a doctor exceeds 26 minutes,waits for inspection and examination time exceeds 36 minutes,and the payment time exceeds 13 minutes,the decrease for the patient experience score of the corresponding stages will slow down.And it’s also observed that,there is a saturation effect of the patient experience if consultation length is more than 8 minutes.7.Two indicators of Topic Incidence(TI)and Topic Occurrence Ratio(TOR)were proposed and used in this study.The TI intensity of diagnosis and treatment behavior,information technology application,and medical service efficiency were 30.1%,22.2%,and 17.9%,respectively from the social media contents.8.On the overall level,among the public opinion on healthcare services from the social media users’ related topics,36.1%of the content had a positive emotion,16.4%of neutral,and 47.4%of negative.Conclusions 1.The CPEQ-A and CPEQ-I developed by this research have an acceptable practicability in Chinese patient survey.As the survey results of the tools,healthcare services for 136 sample hospitals have favorable patient experience.2.Environmental facilities and service efficiency of the hospital are key healthcare domains for improving patient experience.Patient experience of waiting time and hospital food are key issues to be improved for outpatient and inpatient respectively.3.The hospital in western region of China should be paid more attention by the government healthcare regulation sectors to promote the improvement of healthcare service.To enhance the patient experience of humanistic care could be effectively improving the overall level of patient experience.4.The public opinion’s focus on healthcare services related topics are technique issues during the service delivery process.The public’s perception of the behavior of medical treatment are positive,while the perception and evaluation of hospital service efficiency are negative.5.The innovation of the research was developed both ambulatory service and inpatient service measure instruments in this research,thus enable the research quantitatively revealed the priority aspects and standards of patient experience improvement in hospital.A new approach to healthcare services evaluation based on the perspective of infodemiology has been proposed and used.6.The patient experience is an intuitive representation of the feeling of healthcare services.The improvement of healthcare services should be based on the regular evaluation of patient experience.Institutionalization and normalization of patient experience monitoring and evaluation scheme should be considered by the government.7.Development of special patient experience of care measure,Standardization of patient experience evaluation results,integration with clinical quality and safety assessment,exploration of innovative evaluation methods,and design of medical insurance payment plans included the patient experience would be of benefit in future research.