Determinants of Patient Satisfaction at Public Sector Health Facilities in Bangladesh
PURPOSE Strategies to assure highest patient satisfaction are largely dependent on the understanding of the underlying factors that impact them. Patient satisfaction measures are often considered unreliable, since high degree of satisfaction is reported by patients even when there are clear indications of poor service quality. Since patient satisfaction surveys are conducted at exit from facility, the sample, by design, only includes those who have decided to seek care from the facility, creating a significant bias. Moreover, when there are no other viable alternatives, patients may be hesitant to say anything negative about the health center they may have to use in the future. The research objective is to understand how these biases may have affected the patient satisfaction score. A more robust score will be derived by excluding the potentially biased aspects of satisfaction questions and identify potential service delivery related factors that affect the recalculated scores. DATA/METHODS The 2011 Bangladesh Health Facility Survey; a detailed health facility assessments, healthcare provider interviews, and patient exit surveys, is used to estimate a model that describes how health facility's technological, human, financial, and other characteristics influence patient satisfaction of service quality. RESULTS/POLICY IMPLICATIONS This study helps to better understand the patient satisfaction scores and the specific patient satisfaction questions which are more likely to be more reliable than others. Second, the results will inform stakeholders on the effects of health facility factors on patient satisfaction, allowing development of targeted interventions to improve quality of healthcare services.
