The Evaluation of Reasons for Re-admission to Family Physicians and Emergency Services and the Factors Affecting Satisfaction

Objective: Patient satisfaction is an important indicator for measuring the quality of health care services. The quality of health care service is also closely associated with hospital admissions. In this study, patient satisfaction and health care system quality in emergency department (ED) and primary health care (PHC) department were evaluated and its correlation with recurrent admissions was investigated. Method: This is a questionnaire study conducted with 200 patients admitted to a university hospital ED in Istanbul between 1-15 May 2016. The patients were asked 14 question including medical history with demographic data, any admission to ED or PHC department in last month, results of their admissions and satisfactions rate. Result: Of the 200 patients aged between 18 and 92 years, 53% (n=106) were female and 47% (n=94) were males. Within one month, the proportion of those who were admitted to both PHC and ED was 7.5% (n=15). Satisfaction rate was (2.40) significantly lower in this group than in the others (p=0.014). Only admission to PHC was 13.5% (n=27) and to our ED was 18% (n= 6). In patients admitted to PHC or ED, gender, physician's diagnosis and way of resulting of the physician did not have a significant effect on the satisfaction (p>0.05). Conclussion: The satisfaction rates of patients who were admitted to more than one department (ED and PHC) were significantly lower than patients who were admitted to only one department (ED/PHC). On the other hand there was no correlation between decreased rate of satisfaction and being succesfully diagnosed or results of admissions.