RATING SATISFACTION RESEARCH - IS IT SQUARE POOR, SQUARE FAIR, SQUAREGOOD, SQUARE VERY GOOD, OR SQUARE EXCELLENT

Satisfaction is one of the core outcome measures for health care. it i s intuitively more appealing than measures of health care effectivenes s or efficiency that are more difficult to understand. Satisfaction wi th health care is a measure with a long history in the social sciences . Most current research is less interested in correlations between pat ient characteristics and satisfaction and more focused on improving th e quality of care and service delivered to patients and health plan me mbers. While this article provides a brief overview of historical sati sfaction literature, the primary focus is on current trends in measuri ng satisfaction, including efforts by the National Committee for Quali ty Assurance and the Foundation for Accountability Limitations of curr ent satisfaction measures are discussed; alternatives to using satisfa ction to understand the experience of the health care system are sugge sted.