Background: Since the pilot program for the hospitalist system was initiated in September 2016 in South Korea, hospitalists have provided specialized care to hospitalized patients and played a crucial role as experts in inpatient care. It is essential to analyze patient perceptions of hospitalist services to identify areas for improvement, as well as to study satisfaction with the hospitalist system in order to implement a high-quality hospitalist framework. Furthermore, satisfaction analysis can contribute to the effective establishment of the hospitalist system and enhance its recognition, thereby promoting its activation. However, there has been no comprehensive analysis of patient satisfaction regarding hospitalist services since the introduction of the system in South Korea. Therefore, this study aims to analyze the satisfaction levels of patients who have experienced hospitalist services.
Methods: This study investigated the patient satisfaction survey of patients discharged from a hospitalist-service hospital in South Korea from June 2020 to December 2023. The analysis included all discharged patients who received hospital specialist services. A survey on satisfaction was conducted via a mobile questionnaire after discharge. The survey collected basic information about the patient, including the patient’s discharge date, age at discharge, gender, department, and discharge ward, with encrypted patient identification. In addition, there were standardized questions in five field: four questions about nursing services, four questions about doctor services, five questions about medications and treatment processes, two questions about hospital environment, and four questions about patient rights protection, as well as general evaluations such as overall assessment, intention to recommend, and willingness to revisit.
Results: The mean age was 47.4 ± 23.4 years and 3983 (47.1%%) was male. Average length of stay in hospital is 7.1 days. Overall, survey respondents had a positive perception of the medical services. According to the survey, services improved year-on-year across all indicators. In questions, men gave more positive answers than women. As the patient’s age increased, the positive response to service perception decreased. In particular, for those aged 80 and over, most indicators showed a stronger negative trend than other age groups.Among the five areas, satisfaction with doctor services, medication and treatment process, and patient rights protection was below average. Hospital environment had a common effect on the overall assessment, intention to recommend, and to willingness to revisit. Nursing services were found to have a greater impact on The intention to recommend and the willingness to revisit than other fields. Overall assessment, intension to recommend, and willingness to revisit showed high correlations with each other. Length of hospital stay and age were no significantly correlated with overall assessment, intention to recommend, and willingness to revisit.
Conclusions: We analyzed discharged patients’ satisfaction within the hospitalist-service hospital for the first time in South Korea. Based on this satisfaction analysis, we plan to conduct further research to identify areas for improvement and introduce a high-quality hospitalist system.