Satisfaction with pregnancy and newborn care: Development and results of asurvey in a health maintenance organization

Objective: To measure patient satisfaction with pregnancy and newborn care. Study Design: To develop our survey, we reviewed domains of care that had b een identified by national groups working to develop measures of satisfacti on with cave. Within these domains of care, items pertinent to pregnancy an d newborn care were written, reviewed, and pilot tested in focus groups of women who had recently delivered a baby. A 24-item survey instrument was th e result of this process. Patients and Methods: We sent our survey to 2337 female members of the Sout hern California Kaiser Permanente Medical Care Program approximately 8 week s after they had delivered a baby. The demographic and clinical characteris tics of the respondents were compared with those of the nonrespondents, Results: A total of 1017 women (44%) completed and returned the survey. Eig hty-eight percent of the women who responded were very or somewhat satisfie d with the care they received during their pregnancy and the newborn period . Women who responded differed from those who did not respond on infant bir thweight, maternal age and education, and other variables. The results of o ur survey were forwarded to local quality managers and physicians. Conclusion: Satisfaction with care is an important measure of quality of ca re. Many changes in the delivery system were made in response to the inform ation provided by survey respondents, including offering alternative appoin tment times and scheduling postpartum appointments-before hospital discharg e. Out survey instrument, which assesses satisfaction with pregnancy and ne wborn care, might be useful for other health maintenance organizations for identifying areas where improvement in care is needed.