Customer satisfaction for a psychology outpatients service

Background Patient satisfaction has became a significant aspect of quality assurance in health care. If patients are satisfied they will trust the system and health professionals. Credit is a key factor of adherence to treatment protocols. The objective of this study is monitoring the perceived quality of a Psychology outpatient service identifying problems and implementing corrective actions . Methods A cross-sectional study was conducted. A focus group elaborated an anonymous 12 demands questionnaire aiming to evaluate satisfaction and patients experience. The questionnaire was administrated to all patients accessing the service during the last week of July and the first week of October 2012. 130 questionnaires were distributed. Factor analysis was conducted to identify the principals quality components. Using medians and co-graduations (Spearman's rho), we calculated Priorities for Improvement (PI), which is an indicator for prioritizing actions and improving the service. Results All questionnaires were returned. The values of reliability was above 0.70 (αC = 0.76) and the variance 67.3%. Three components were extracted: “Technical-Organizational Quality factor” (26.4% of the variance), “Quality factor rational”(25.4%) and “Structural-Environmental Quality Factor”(15.5%). PI revealed 2 areas of high priority: the difficulty in finding the ambulatory (PI = 63) and a waiting time exceeding 15 minutes for the visit (PI = 63). Conclusion The most positively scored aspects, of Psychology outpatients services, concerned technical and organizational quality, whereas the structural and environmental quality areas scored less positively. The study has shown also good utility of IP in identifying ambits to improve. Factor analysis showed that technical-organizational aspects are more important than the structural-environmental ones for improving service quality.