慢性病患者對醫療院所之滿意度評量

Patient satisfaction is an important indicator of medical quality. In order to improve the quality of medical service for patients with chronic illness, it is essential to understand their medical needs and how much satisfactory they are after they have received the medical service provided. The purpose of this study is to examine the quality of medical service for chronic illness provided by various medical institutions and the patients’ expectation toward the provided medical care from their own experience when treated at these medical institutions.
This study employed purposive sampling methods sampling the outpatients who had visited the physicians either at the family medicine or the internal medicine departments in three different levels of medical institutions, i.e., medical center, regional hospital and community clinic. To collect data, face-to-face interview was used in this study. The content of questionnaire included demographic information of respondents, personal medical history, and patient’s satisfaction. Both the open-ended and close-ended questions were included in the questionnaire.
The results revealed that most of the patients gave pretty positive rating to medical service they had received. It was the level of medical institution that differentiated the patient’s satisfaction rather than the specialty the physician belonged. The most dissatisfaction item to those medical center and regional was the time of lengthy waiting, and for community clinic was lack of the necessary medical equipment.
In summary, if the number of outpatients could be greatly reduced, the time of lengthy waiting will be shortened, the procedures of medical service involved which includes the medical examination, the payments for the treatment and the waiting at the in-house pharmacy, will be improved; and the loading of medical workers will be reduced. The study suggested that if these matters could be better addressed, the quality of the medical service would be improved, which in-turn would result in higher level of patients satisfaction toward the medical service.