George Samoutis

and 2 more

Background: Patient satisfactions is a widely accepted metric of quality of care. Patient satisfaction is important in understanding the perspectives of the recipients of care and can act as a quality improvement tool. It is of paramount importance to assess patient satisfaction specially after a major healthcare reform. This is the first study to describe the level of patient satisfaction with new Primary Care in Cyprus. Methods: An internationally validated tool for patients’ evaluations of general practice care was used in an online survey in one of the largest group practices in Cyprus Primary Care. An online questionnaire was sent to all registered email addresses of the group practice. A total of 5,000 emails were sent measuring patient satisfaction based on the percentages of patients reporting level of satisfaction on a 5-point Likert scale for the items in the questionnaire. Results: The overall satisfaction percentage was 80.51% (SD 32.36). The vast majority of the questions asked were rated as excellent. Waiting in the waiting room was the item rated poorest with a mean(SD) 4.05 (1.08). The item rated the highest was the safeguarding of patients records and confidentiality with a mean (SD) 0f 4.65(0.70). Conclusions: The first patient satisfaction survey since the introduction of the new NHS in one of the largest Primary care centres seems to demonstrate very high satisfaction rates comparable with other developed EU NHSs. A larger study needs to be performed with more GP practices in order to obtain a national understanding of the patient satisfaction to supplement quality improvement interventions and foster patient empowerment.