Abstract:
Patients are key stakeholders in health care and it is extremely important to increase their satisfaction level. Patient satisfaction is a subject of great interest to health care providers and researchers alike. Since competition has increased in recent years, this exerts more pressure on health care providers to render more improved service quality to satisfy their clients. Therefore, this study sought to determine the level of satisfaction and also to examine the factors that influenced patient satisfaction with health care services provided at three health facilities in the Cape Coast Metropolis. The factors whose relationships with level of satisfaction were assessed included socio-demographic, enabling and need factors.
Data were gathered from 385 randomly selected clients from the University of Cape Coast Hospital, Cape Coast Metropolitan Hospital and Ewim Polyclinic using an adapted structured questionnaire. Both descriptive and inferential statistical tools, including frequencies, percentages, Fisher’s exact test and Chi-square tests were employed to analyse the data in the SPSS.
It was found that an insignificant proportion of the respondents were very satisfied with the services of these health facilities. Also, there was a significant association between waiting time, cost, environment, information disclosure expectations and patient satisfaction. The study recommended that the management of health facilities in the metropolis strive to improve upon the quality of care provided at their facilities in order to satisfy clients.
