Abstract
Patient satisfaction with health-care delivery is essential today. Using a psychometrically validated questionnaire—SERVPERF—we quantitatively measured patients’ perceptions of the quality of service at the point of care in a PET/CT center, and we used this information to guide subsequent quality improvement interventions. SERVPERF is a survey instrument that measures performance for various services. It has demonstrated reliability and validity across various industries. The standard for measuring patient perception of quality in hospitals—the “Hospital Consumer Assessment of Health Care Providers and Systems” survey—does not include questions about the care received in a typical radiology department and is not performed at the point of care. Methods: 429 patients undergoing PET/CT examinations filled out an anonymous modified SERVPERF questionnaire on completion of imaging and reported their level of agreement with each of the 27 items by circling a Likert-type scale from 1 to 7. Each item was designed to elicit a response on the patient’s perception of performance on a metric of quality. Data were summarized as the mean of each item. The frequency of low scores (≤3) was also calculated. Results: The items with the lowest mean score were “The department’s physical facilities are visually appealing” (6.158) and “Documentation such as sign-in sheet, handouts, and brochures are visually appealing” (6.162). The item with the highest frequency of low scores (≤3) was, “The department provides services at the promised time” (11/429 responses). Conclusion: Our study showed that patient perception of quality in a diagnostic radiology department can be measured with a standardized survey at the point of care delivery and used to direct patient-centered quality improvement interventions.
Footnotes
Published online Oct. 17, 2017.
