The Study On The Difference Of The Patient Satisfaction In Each Outpatient Service Process Between 3 A Grade Hospital And Community Hospital From Beijing

Objectives The purpose of this study was to compare the patient satisfaction in each clinic process of out-patient between 3 A grade Hospitals (Hereinafter referred to as big hospital) and Community Hospitals. Based on these, we might evaluate whether the patient satisfaction would influence their tendency of seeing doctors between two group hospitals, provide some consultations for patients to selectively see the doctors, and give some references and suggestions for hospitals to improve clinic process and service.Methods Adopting the combined methods of quantitative research and qualitative research, we surveyed 196 patients during each clinic steps on the spot from six hospitals in Beijing.Three from 52 large-scale or middle-scale hospitals (named large hospitals next, not including military hospitals and law enforcement hospitals) and three from 137 community hospitals were chosen in our studyThe inclusion criteria for patients were those who wanted to treat symptoms of cough or runny nose this time and were the residents of Beijing city zone. The patients were recruited proportionally on their ages, sexes and clinic time between those from large hospitals and community hospitals.Two trained health workers were responsible for following up the patient during each the clinic step, surveying their satisfaction level for different factors, and comparing the differences of satisfactions for different factors.Results The out-patient clinic service processes in these six hospitals were primarily similar. In the large hospitals, the patients' satisfaction level for registration, waiting, checking, pricing & paying, getting medicine of service process and total satisfaction level were lower than those in the community hospitals, and patients' trust for large-scale hospitals was also lower than that for community hospitals (P<0.05).The main considerations for patients to choose large-scale hospitals were near to home (47.4%), designated hospital (46.4%) and higher technology (39.2%),The main considerations for patients to choose community hospitals were near to home (75.8%), designated hospital (33.3%), good service manner (24.2%) and good service process (23.2%).Conclusions For large-scale hospitals, they should improve their clinic process and service quality. They should check their service process and arrival characteristics for patients, promote service level and efficiency by adopting some modern management concepts and advanced technology. The hospitals also need to enhance the humanistic service concepts, comply the tenet "everything for patients", thinking everything based on patients. And community hospitals should enhance their publication, encourage patients with chronic diseases to the community hospitals so as to reduce the clinic pressure of large hospitals and promote community health service. Government should take steps to control the medical fees and lighten the burden of common people.Unfortunately, the patients we recruited in the present study were those with chronic or regular illness, which were not believed with significant difference in curative effect between large scale hospitals and community hospitals. Thus it barely drew a conclusion whether the difference on therapy technologies among those selected hospitals would affect on the satisfaction level of patients.The 46.4% patients from large scale hospitals and 33.3% from community hospitals in the present study were forced to designed hospitals because of medical expense reimbursement. Thus it was necessary to make our present medical policies more flexible, so the patient could make their own decision to accept the medical service from the facilities they trusted, it would also promote the competitions among facilities, and finally advanced their qualities of medical service.