|
Adelaide Research and Scholarship
:
Schools and Disciplines
:
School of Population Health & Clinical Practice
:
General Practice
:
General Practice Publications
Permanent link to this item:
http://hdl.handle.net/2440/51701
|
| Type: | Article |
| Title: | Does patient satisfaction of general practice change over a decade? |
| Author: | Allan, James Andrew
Schattner, Peter
Stocks, Nigel Phillip
Ramsay, Emmae Nicole |
| Citation: | BMC Family Practice, 2009; 10:13 |
| Publisher: | BioMed Central Ltd. |
| Issue Date: | 2009 |
| ISSN: | 1471-2296 |
| School/Discipline: | General Practice |
Statement of
Responsibility: | James Allan, Peter Schattner, Nigel Stocks and Emmae Ramsay |
| Abstract: | Background
The Patient Participation Program (PPP) was a patient satisfaction survey endorsed by the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners and designed to assist general practitioners in continuous quality improvement (CQI). The survey was been undertaken by 3500 practices and over a million patients between 1994 and 2003. This study aimed to use pooled patient questionnaire data to investigate changes in satisfaction with primary care over time.
Methods
The results of 10 years of the PPP surveys were analyzed with respect to 10 variables including the year of completion, patient age, gender, practice size, attendance at other doctors, and whether the practice had previously undertaken the survey. Comparisons were made using Logistic Generalized Estimating Equations (LGEE).
Results
There was a very high level of satisfaction with general practice in Australia (99% of respondents). An independent indicator of satisfaction was created by pooling the results of 12 questions. This new indicator had a greater variance than the single overall satisfaction question. Participants were shown to have higher levels of satisfaction if they were male, older, did not attend other practitioners or the practice was small in size. A minimal improvement in satisfaction was detected in this pooled indicator for the second or third survey undertaken by a practice. There was however no statistically significant change in pooled satisfaction with the year of survey.
Conclusion
The very high level of satisfaction made it difficult to demonstrate change. It is likely that this and the presentation of results made it difficult for GPs to use the survey to improve their practices. A more useful survey would be more sensitive to detect negative patient opinions and provide integrated feedback to GPs. At present, there are concerns about the usefulness of the PPP in continuous quality improvement in general practice. |
| Description: | © 2009 Allan et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
| RMID: | 0020090344 |
| DOI: | 10.1186/1471-2296-10-13 |
Links to content
(authorised users): | Check full text options |
| Appears in Collections: | General Practice Publications
|
| View citing articles in: | Web of Science
Google Scholar
Scopus
|
Unless expressly stated otherwise, all items in Adelaide Research and Scholarship are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved.
|
