An evaluation of patient satisfaction with family practice care in Slovenia

Objective. To describe the level of patient satisfaction with family practi ce in Slovenia. Design. An internationally developed instrument for patients' evaluations o f general practice care was used in a postal survey. Setting. A representative sample of 36 family practices in Slovenia. Study participants. Sixty consecutive patients in every practice were appro ached and offered a self-administered questionnaire. A total of 2160 questi onnaires were handed out. Main outcome measure. Percentages of patients reporting level of satisfacti on on a 5-point Likert scale for the items in the questionnaire. Results. On average 58.2% of respondents rated the level of care received a s excellent. Waiting in the waiting room was the item rated poorest (26.0%) . Participants were also less satisfied with perceived time during the cons ultation (51.6%) and with connectional aspects of care: the feeling that fa mily practitioners showed interest in their personal situation (46.5%); the feeling that family practitioners made it easy to explain problems (49.1%) . On the other hand patients praised many other aspects of family practice care in Slovenia: confidentiality of medical records (77.0%); Listening cap acity of their family physicians (69.4%); being able to speak to the family practitioner on the 'phone (72%). Conclusions. Patient satisfaction with family practice care in Slovenia was shown to be relatively high and can be compared to other European countrie s. The results showed areas in which quality improvement is required: organ izational changes to shorten the waiting time in the waiting room and great er emphasis on communication skills.