Race and satisfaction in general OB/GYN clinics

Cross-sectional surveys assessing satisfaction with services were obtained from 838 patients who were seen in one of the two general OB/GYN clinics (455 in the base hospital clinic and 391 in a satellite clinic). Multiple logistic regression analysis was used to identify subgroups of patients who were not very satisfied with care received.When the patients seen in the base hospital were analyzed separately, Asian respondents had significantly lower odds of being very satisfied relative to non-Hispanic white respondents (AOR = .33, p < .01).Asian patients may be less satisfied than others when treated at a larger facility. Patients treated at a satellite clinic tended to be more satisfied than patients seen at the base hospital.Patient satisfaction has become widely regarded as an important performance indicator for health systems [1]. Patients are the best judge of those aspects of care that matter the most to them [2]. Therefore, patient-centered health systems seek to achieve high levels of patient satisfaction. However, fewer studies reported in the OB/GYN literature focus on satisfaction than might be expected. Hospital maternity care has been assessed using patient satisfaction [3,4] and patient satisfaction has been used to compare OB/GYN to other providers or specialties [5,6]. An increasing number of studies have evaluated the benefits of particular procedures using patient satisfaction as an outcome measure [7-13].This report adds to the limited fund of information about the determinants of patient satisfaction among OB/GYN clinic patients. Studies of other types of medical care have found racial disparities in satisfaction [14-16] and better satisfaction with midlevel providers than with MDs in either pediatrics or adult medicine clinics [17]. Organizational issues appear to be important as well: women seen in women's clinics are more satisfied than those attending mixed-gender clinics [18], patients seeing providers of the same race are more satisfied tha