Contribution to healthcare management: Larger demographic cohorts now entering old age has increased the demand on home care services. Against this background, quality management in home care services is essential. Today,... [ view full abstract ]
Contribution to healthcare management:
Larger demographic cohorts now entering old age has increased the demand on home care services. Against this background, quality management in home care services is essential. Today, quality management systems neglect the subjective perspective of patients on the quality of home care services, although research indicates that patients value co-creation can enhance quality, effectiveness and efficiency in the care process. Further, increased competition among home care services allows patients to choose among various providers based on quality data. Accordingly, the patient perspective should be considered and strengthened. Our study gives new insights about the challenges of measuring patient satisfaction in the home care setting and gathering patient satisfaction data. The study proposes a scientifically based measurement that considers the main challenges identified in measuring patient satisfaction in home care services.
Significance of the Research:
Patient satisfaction is one of the most commonly used outcome indicators for the quality of health care. Often home care use an objective measurement of home care quality (e.x Resident Assessment Instrument). According to the recent state of the art, only minor efforts have been made to develop a measure in the context of home care services. Existing instruments used in home care services have been adapted from other medical care services, neglecting the unique characteristics of home care settings. Further several ad-hoc measures in health care do not allow for comparison across studies and as benchmarks. Third, existing measures lack a sound methodological approach for scale development that includes reliability and validity tests, and the application of multidimensional measures.
Research Question and Method:
The underlying research question of this study is to examine how patient satisfaction can be measured in the context of home care services while taking into account the specific needs of elderly. The results have implications on the future development of a new patient satisfaction instrument. We conducted a comprehensive literature review on existing measurement instruments and methodological challenges. This was complemented with a review on existing instruments used by practitioners and expert interviews.
Conceptual considerations/ Theoretical Background:
We apply existing patient satisfaction instruments to the context of home care setting and extend them by gerontology and psychological knowledge in order to consider the special needs of elderly.
Preliminary Results:
The literature search resulted in the identification of n = 17 home care patient satisfaction survey scales that were published or referenced in published studies and meet the inclusion criteria. The findings are consistent with existing instruments used by practitioners and expert interviews. Concerning the methodological challenges, the result shows four main challenges: challenges regarding the patients (e.x. physically and cognitive disabilities), measurement of cognitive and affective aspects of patient satisfaction (e.x. SAM-Scale), research methods (e.x. timing) and validity (e.x. halo-effect). We discuss the different conflicts of aims resulting from these challenges and a propose how to weight these facing the further development of a new measurement Instrument.
