Authors (including presenting author) :
Wong ELY, Cheung AWL, Lau JCH, Yeoh EK
Affiliation :
Centre for Health Systems and Policy Research, The Jockey Club School of Public Health and Primary Care, Faculty of Medicine, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Introduction :
A positive patient experience is an important impact on health care processes and outcomes such as increasing patient adherence to medical advice, reducing utilization of unnecessary health care service etc. In order to improve the quality of care from the perspective of patient, continuous observation of patient experience are needed. A territory-wide patient experience on specialist outpatient service was introduced in Hospital Authority (HA) in 2014. The second round of the survey was conducted in 2018.
Objectives :
The study aimed to explore patients’ experience by adopting a locally validated tool – Short-form Specialist Outpatient Patient Experience Questionnaire (SF-SOPEQ) in 2018, and to identify areas for improvement in delivering specialist outpatient service in Hong Kong (HK).
Methodology :
A territory-wide cross-sectional survey was conducted among those attending any one of the 26 HA Specialist Outpatient Clinics (SOPCs) between 24 July 2018 and 29 March 2019, using SF-SOPEQ. The respondents must be HK resident, aged ≥18, able to be contacted within two weeks after attendance, and able to speak Cantonese, English or Mandarin. Respondents who were known to be current inpatients during interview would be excluded from the survey. The SF-SOPEQ consisted of 41 evaluative items under 10 care aspects to codify the patient experiences following the patient’s journey from making appointment to leaving the clinic. The response to evaluative items would be converted to a score in a scale of (most negative experience) to 10 (most positive experience).
Result & Outcome :
A total of 13,911 patients responded to the survey with a response rate of 78% and the findings were encouraging. The survey revealed that the overall patient experience on specialist outpatient service was rated 7 or above by 89% of respondents on the scoring scale of 0-10. Compared to the findings in 2014, a few care aspects were improved such as ventilation and cleanliness of the SOPCs, doctors’ increased awareness of patients’ medical history and more time for discussing with and listening to patients. However, there is still room for improvement in several aspects including (1) self-introduction of healthcare staff; (2) privacy when being examined/treated or during discussion of condition; and (3) provision of posters/leaflets in the clinic about hand sanitation. The findings demonstrated the continuous observation of patient experience severs as an important element to monitor the service quality and understand the needs of patients which could be establish strategic priority for delivering quality health care from patients’ perspectives.
