The development of a patient satisfaction questionnaire in the ambulatory setting

Patient satisfaction is of critical interest to medical care providers. The main objective of this study was to evaluate the psychometric properties of a patient satisfaction questionnaire. A preliminary 80-item questionnaire was created, and a random sample of 268 family practice patients participated. Subjects rated items on a 4-point Likert scale (strongly disagree, disagree, agree, strongly agree). Items were subjected to a principal components varimax rotated factor analysis and five factors (60 items) were extracted, accounting for 47.5% of the variance. These factors were: satisfaction with physician, dissatisfaction with practice management, physician availability, receptionist behavior, and wait time. Alpha reliability coefficients for factors 1-5 were: .96, .93, .89, .84, and .78, respectively. All items correlated highly with total scores on the respective factors. Factor intercorrelations were all significant (P <.001) and in the expected direction. Patients with a higher level of education were significantly less satisfied about physician availability than patients without a high school education (P <.05). Implications of the findings are discussed.