Semi-customizing patient surveys: linking results and organizational conditions.

Objective: The study investigated the needs and consequences of semi-customizing patient satisfaction surveys to low organizational levels and explored whether patient satisfaction was correlated with local organizational conditions.

Design: From 1999 to 2006, the County of Aarhus carried out 398 surveys during four rounds in eight hospitals. To explain differences between the wards, data on the 40 wards with the best and the 40 wards with the worst evaluations (identified by patient surveys) were compared with the data from job satisfaction surveys and management information systems.

Setting: Eight public hospitals in a Danish county.

Participants: 32,809 inpatients and 1842 nurses on 84 wards.

Main Outcome Measure: Optimal organizational level for measuring patient satisfaction and correlations between overall patient satisfaction and organizational context.

Results: In all, 71.4% of the departments chose to have the survey results specified at the subunit level or for specific diagnostic groups. Substantial differences in patient satisfaction between wards are illustrated. On the wards with the highest improvement potential, we found significantly higher occupancy rates, acute rates, rates of sickness absenteeism, staff perceptions of high workload and low experience of professionalism.

Conclusions: The study confirmed that departments desired individual, detailed descriptions of the results. Differences in patient satisfaction were associated with differences in organizational conditions. Establishing a link between patient satisfaction and organizational variables broadens the quality development focus to include more than simply analysis of specific questions. Semi-customizing patient surveys are recommended.