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Abstract
In recent years, much attention has been paid to the assessment of the quality of
health care. This focus has been driven mainly by a desire to improve health care
and decrease inequalities within health care systems. As well as addressing key areas
such as structure, process, and outcome, which are normally taken from the provider's
viewpoint, it is also necessary to address the patient's perspective. Patient-reported
outcomes are an increasingly popular method of assessing the patient's experience
within the health care system. Along with well-known patient reported outcomes such
as health-related quality of life and current health state, patient satisfaction can
provide an ultimate end point to health care quality. It is thus an essential part
of quality assessment. The concept of patient satisfaction and its measurement, however,
has often been overlooked by researchers. Therefore, current measures of satisfaction
may not be adequate to assess quality of health care. This article aims to provide
an overview of the concept of patient satisfaction. It also discusses current methods
of patient-reported outcome assessment and suggests methodology to create new instruments
to measure patient satisfaction.