Patient satisfaction: a valid index of quality of care in a psychiatric service.
OBJECTIVE
To assess patients', clinicians' and referrers' satisfaction with care in newly referred psychiatric patients and to compare these with standard quality indicators such as waiting times used by the service.


METHODS
A random sample of all new adult psychiatric patients presenting over a 4-month period in 2 successive years to an inner-city psychiatric service was assessed.


RESULTS
One hundred and thirteen (68%) of 167 randomly selected patients were seen. Independent evidence of service performance showed that patient satisfaction, but not clinician or referrer satisfaction, was a more accurate indicator of quality of care than standard indicators.


CONCLUSIONS
Simple ratings of patient satisfaction alone may be useful indicators of quality of psychiatric care.
Shipley
K
K
Department of Public Mental Health, Imperial College School of Medicine, Paterson Centre, UK.
Hilborn
B
B
Hansell
A
A
Tyrer
J
J
Tyrer
P
P
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000628:therapy; D008605:Mental Health Services / Q000592:standards*; D008875:Middle Aged; D017060:Patient Satisfaction; D011787:Quality of Health Care; D011897:Random Allocation; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D006113:United Kingdom