The authors determined the feasibility of using a single mailing, anonymous postal …

• Abstract
• Background
• Methods
• Results
• Discussion
• Conclusion
• References
• Figures
• Tables

Biology Articles » Medicine » Emergency Medicine » Postal survey methodology to assess patient satisfaction in a suburban emergency medical services system: an observational study » Results

Results

- Postal survey methodology to assess patient satisfaction in a suburban emergency medical services system: an observational study

Main results

The characteristics of patients served by the EMS system are given in Table 1, stratified by year. Of the 4,806 runs conducted during the four year period, 2,674 met criteria for mailing a patient satisfaction survey (Table 2). Of the 2,674 surveys mailed during the four year period, 857 were returned; the overall response rate was 32.0% (95CI 30.3% – 33.9%). The response rate during the first year was higher than in all other years (p 0.191) (Figure 2)

Secondary results

To assess resource requirements, we estimated the cost and time resources hours necessary to routinely implement the survey and collect survey returns. Surveys were printed in batches of 1000, at a cost of $240.00 per batch or $0.24 per postcard. When combined with an outgoing and return postage rate of $0.37 per postcard, the total cost per survey mailed was $0.98. About 60–80 surveys were mailed each month, with the lieutenant reporting 2 hours to print and label these postcards. About 20 to 30 postcards were returned each month, with the lieutenant reporting about 4 hours spent collating, interpreting, and reporting. Thus, the overall requirements on a monthly basis was about $70 and 6 hours.

For comparison to other systems, and to assess the face validity of the survey instrument, we also analyzed the patient satisfaction data. Table 3 shows the proportions of patients who were satisfied or very satisfied with the care they received. Throughout the four year period, 847/851 respondents (99.5%) were satisfied or very satisfied on the overall satisfaction measure (question 5). Three patients felt the service was adequate and one was very unsatisfied. Agreement between the two physicians coding the open ended questions was high (Kappa > 0.964). The results are shown in Table 4. Three percent of respondents reported that concerns they had were not addressed by our personnel. Interpersonal communication was the single most important action that made patients feel better, followed by response time and technical actions. Six percent of patients reported that something could have been done differently to make the experience more positive.