Abstract
Objectives: The purpose of the study was to develop and validate a standardized instrument for measuring patient satisfaction among short-stay patients.
Methods: Item selection was based on qualitative interviews, literature and own experiences. After pre-testing with short-stay patients from general hospital care (n=154) a 50-item-version has been tested with patients from three other hospitals (n=466), including two departments of minor surgery and medical wards.
Results: Item and factor analysis confirmed the hypothesized dimensions, reliability (Cronbach's α) ranged from 0.57 to 0.87. All sub-scales correlate moderately with health status, cause of admission and age.
Conclusion: Our basic assumption that quality management needs a specific instrument for short-stay patients had to be modified. The instrument can be used a) to look at quality differences between short-stay and long-stay patients, b) to evaluate specific short-stay therapies, as well as c) to make total quality monitoring easier with more attention to health outcome.
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