Patient satisfaction in New Zealand.
OBJECTIVE
To determine whether the Patient Survey Guidelines developed for district health board (DHBs) in 2000 are being adhered to and what the results of the survey can tell us about patient satisfaction in New Zealand.


METHODS
Nationwide patient survey data obtained from the Ministry of Health under the Official Information Act was examined to determine the validity and reliability of the survey instrument. Data was then analysed to ascertain whether patients are more or less satisfied than in previous years and what factors influence patient satisfaction.


RESULTS
To determine the reliability of the instrument, the "Cronbach alpha" statistic was calculated. The patient satisfaction instrument demonstrated high levels of reliability for patient satisfaction measures of "communication", a "personal approach" and "organising patient care". Assessment of convergent validity showed that the highest correlations were found between items that measured closely related aspects of patient care and, conversely, discriminant validity was demonstrated by the very low correlations between items that measured unrelated aspects of patient care.


CONCLUSIONS
The current dataset of some 229,000 inpatient and 254,000 outpatient records from 21 New Zealand DHBs has the potential to generate extremely valuable information that can be employed to increase patient satisfaction throughout New Zealand. However, while high levels of reliability and validity were demonstrated, the majority of DHBs do not implement the survey as required by Patient Survey Guidelines which it developed in 2000.
Zwier
Gerard
G
Health Services Consumer Research Limited, Auckland 1140, New Zealand. gzwier@xtra.co.nz
D000328:Adult; D017677:Age Distribution; D016208:Databases, Factual; D005006:Ethnicity / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D005260:Female; D017408:Guidelines as Topic; D019538:Health Care Surveys / Q000592:standards*; D006760:Hospitalization; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009520:New Zealand; D017060:Patient Satisfaction / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D017678:Sex Distribution