Study Examines Factors that Influence Patient Satisfaction

The Research Bogomolova S, Tan PJ, Dunn SP, et al. Understanding the factors that influence patient satisfaction with ambulance services. Health Mark Q. 2016;33(2):163–180. The Science This paper comes from data collected by the Council of Ambulance Authorities Inc., the professional organization representing 11 statewide ambulance services across Australia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea. They send annual surveys to a patientand/or their family who had emergent requests for EMS over a randomly selected two-month period. The response rate averages 30%. The satisfaction questions ask the respondents to rate, on a 5-point scale, the time it took for their call to be answered, call-taker assistance, ambulance response time, ride quality, care and treatment received, the ability of the paramedic to explain what was happening and their overall satisfaction with the service. They analyzed 50,349 responses collected between 2003 and 2012. This paper examined the "human elements"—those that could be influenced by the dispatchers and paramedics. They report that respondents were either very satisfied or satisfied with call-taker assistance (97.6%), paramedic care (98%), paramedic explanations (95.9%) and overall satisfaction (97.5%). Although it's not a human factor, respondents were two and a half times more likely to be satisfied overall when they were satisfied with the response time. They concluded that they'd established a base...
Source: JEMS Administration and Leadership - Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Tags: Patient Care Administration and Leadership Source Type: news