Patient Satisfaction in General Medical Practice And The Association With Patient Shortage

Abstract

Background: After the introduction of the general practitioner (GP) scheme in 2001, many GPs did not achieve their preferred list size, and experienced patient shortage. Patients have imperfect information about GPs. Results in the literature have indicated that GPs with inferior quality are more likely to have patient shortage as patients choose their GP based on a perception of quality. Previous research has established that patient shortage is associated with lower patient satisfaction except satisfaction with waiting times. In 2012, the anonymous GP rating site Legelisten was established. This service enables people to rate the GP along various dimensions like listening skills, opening hours and waiting time. Objective: To examine whether data from an anonymous rating site where the sample is based on self-selection yields similar results as the literature based on surveys of a randomized sample. More specifically, we investigate whether patient shortage is associated with lower patient satisfaction with the interpersonal relationship between patient and GP, and higher satisfaction with waiting times. Method: The study employs descriptive statistics and multilevel ordinal regression analysis in order to investigate the association between patient shortage and patient satisfaction when accounting for influence by age, gender and competition. Results: Patient shortage is associated with lower odds of high satisfaction with the interpersonal relationship, and higher odds of high satisfaction with waiting times compared with GPs who have full lists. Conclusion: The results in the analysis based on a self-selected sample are aligned with the existing literature indicating that there is an association between patient shortage and lower patient satisfaction on dimensions describing the interpersonal relationship between the patient and the GP. GPs with patient shortage react by offering shorter waiting times, as satisfaction is more likely to be higher on those dimensions for the same GPs. The results suggest that the rating site could be useful in alleviating the information problem patients face when choosing a GP.