Results
A total of 501 questionnaires were completed and successfully submitted
online. Of those submitted none had any missing data. Of those 501
responses, 33 answered that they had not contact with their GP in the
last 12 months therefore excluded. All 468 responses were fully
analysed. This gave a response rate of 9.38%. It needs to be noted that
we could not assess how many emails reached the beneficiaries as there
is the potential of the email ending up in the spam folders and never
been looked at. Despite that at 50% of population proportion our sample
gave a 95% chance that the real value is within ±4.31% of the measured
satisfaction value.
Participant
characteristics
Participant characteristics are shown in Table 1. The age of the
participants ranged for 18-84 with a mean (SD) age of the responders
45.14(12.53). The majority of the responders were female 58.97%. As far
as the level of education is concerned, the majority of the participants
had graduated from tertiary education (79.71% ) while the lowest
percentage (0.21%) is recorded for those who have not finished the
compulsory primary school. Regarding the self-rated health, the vast
majority of participants evaluated their state of health as good or very
good (77.78%) and as poor or fairly good (4.27%), while 17.95%
evaluated their health as excellent. Around one third of the
participants (31.82%) stated that they have a chronic condition. Also,
the majority of the patients (52.76 %) visited their doctor up to 2
times in the last 12 months.
Patient satisfaction
The mean experience scores of study participants using the
mean(SD),median(IQR) floor and ceiling effects for the 23 items are
shown in Table 2. All items with the exception of item 22, had a ceiling
effect larger than 50% (range: 50.6%-66.3%). For all items, the
distribution was skewed to ‘excellent’
The lowest mean(SD) score was for the item “Waiting time in the waiting
room?” (4.05(1.08)) while the second lowest was “Being able to speak
to the GP on the telephone” with a mean(SD) 4.25 (1.06). The highest
mean (SD) satisfaction was for the item “Keeping your records and data
confidential?” (4.65 (0.70)). The majority of the mean item scores were
heavily skewed towards positive evaluations. The ceiling effects ranged
from 43.67%–77.70% while floor effects were all less than 4%.
Exploratory factor analysis did not reveal any underlying sub-dimension
in the satisfaction scale. The reliability of the tool was very high
(Cronbach’s alpha 0.98).
The overall % satisfaction of all beneficiaries was 80.51% (SD 32.36).
Further analysis of the % satisfaction was performed for the
sociodemographic measures collected. A Mann Whitney test was performed
to assess differences of median % satisfaction between gender. The
results indicate no statistically significant difference between the two
(p-value=0.1323). The same test was used to assess the differences
between satisfaction and whether the beneficiary has a chronic disease.
Again, the results indicated no statistical significant difference (p
value=0.9612). A Kruskal-Wallis H test was performed to determine of %
satisfaction was associated with different age groups (18-29, 30-39,
40-49, 50-59, 60-65, >65). This test showed that there was
no statistically significant difference in the satisfaction % between
the six groups , χ2 (5)=1.226 p-value=0.9424. The same
was true for education (primary, secondary tertiary)
χ2 (2)=1.955 p-value=0.3763, the number of GP visits
(1,2,3-5, 6+) χ2 (3)=5.400 p-value=0.1448 and the
health status (excellent, very good/good, fair/poor)
χ2 (2)=1.494 p-value=0.4738.