Evaluation of Dental Patients’ Satisfaction in a Local Health Unit (LHU) of the Greek National Organization for Health Care Services (EOPYY) in Athens

Introduction: Quality of health services is a “most wanted” goal in modern societies and their evaluation necessary in order to assess the completion of the foregone targets. Patients’ satisfaction is a qualitative evaluation and simultaneously aim of every health system with multiple benefits not only for itself but also for the patient. Its measurement contributes to the feedback and improvement of the provided services. Aim: The aim of this study was the measurement of the dental outpatients’ satisfaction of the Local Health Unit of EOPYY, in Patisia area, the measurement of DMFT index and the detection of statistical important correlations with demographic and other various data. Material and Method: It was used a questionnaire of closed ended items on a 5-point Likert scale, among 150 checking-out patients of the Dental Therapeutic Dept of Patision LHU. Totally, 140 subjects replied (response rate 93.3%). The research took place between April and May 2013. For the description of various characteristics of the sample, tables of total and relative frequencies (categorical variables) and measures location-variability (Quantitative variables) were done. The analysis conducted with the statistical pack Stata 10 (StataCorp., TX USA). Results: The overall patient satisfaction was 87.1% (mean value 4.5/5), while mean value for satisfaction for the dentists was 4.51/5. The temperature of the waiting room had the lowest score (3.84/5). Problems of health quality related to dental therapy appear mostly between “never” and “rarely” answers (mean value=1.77, median=1.4). The overall DMFT index of the sample was 13.0. Statistically significant correlations (strong or weak) were detected between satisfaction and age or nationality, between elements of quality of life (related with dental therapy) and gender, as well as between DMFT index and age. Conclusions: The outpatients of the dental therapy department believe that it functions quite satisfactorily. Advanced age, and, slightly more, immigrants are the most satisfied patients.

Category: Volume 55, N 2
Hits: 2474 Hits
Created Date: 15-06-2016
Authors: Dimitris Vagias , George Alexias , Petros Kostagiolas , George Intas