Graduate Management Project: An Evaluation of the Johns Hopkins Outpatient Surgery Center Patient Satisfaction Survey.

摘要

Changes in the health care market such as increased competition, managed care, and declining reimbursements provided incentive for health care organizations to seek better ways of doing business and many started embracing the quality culture. These changes in the health care market along with a shift to consumerism have forced virtually all health care organizations to face the challenge of defining and measuring quality. Customer or patient satisfaction is a widely accepted measure of quality. Numerous organizations use satisfaction surveys as the foundation for organizational improvement and the Johns Hopkins Health System is no different. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the patient satisfaction survey instrument used in the Johns Hopkins Outpatient Surgery Center and to provide recommendations on how surveying patient satisfaction in this service area might be improved. The objectives of the study in regards to evaluation of the current survey instrument were two-fold. The first part of the evaluation assessed the psychometric properties of the instrument using statistical analyses. The second part of the evaluation critically evaluated the survey instrument relative to the literature. The analyses of the survey indicated that the survey was adequate in term of validity and reliability. Nonetheless, suggestions on how to improve the survey are offered. improving the survey using scientific methodology is a resource- consuming process. Based on this and other facts and the desire to benchmark with other academic medical centers it is recommended that an outside vendor be used to provide patient satisfaction survey services to the Outpatient Surgery Center.