Patient Satisfaction Terms

o Accessibility:

Factors related to the ease of obtaining medical care, such as waiting times to schedule an appointment, on the phone or in the office.

o Acceptability:

Factors related to the interpersonal or technical aspects of the patient-provider relationship, such as whether the physician clearly answered the patient's questions.

o Reliability:

How consistent, accurate, and stable a survey is as an "instrument" for measuring patient satisfaction.

o Validity:

How well the instrument measures patient satisfaction. For example, do the questions adequately represent issues of patient satisfaction, and do they accurately measure the qualities that define that satisfaction?

o Sampling:

A method of surveying a subset of patients that represent the broad population, without under- or over-representation. For example, a medical group could survey every fifth or 10th patient until a predetermined number of questionnaires are completed, such as 400 patients.

o Sample size:

How many surveys are collected per physician or medical group. Larger sample sizes produce more accurate results with a lower margin of error.