Assessing patients' priorities and perceptions of the quality of health care : The development of the quote-rheumatic-patients instrument

• Published in: British journal of rheumatology Vol. 37; no. 4; pp. 362 - 368
• Main Authors: VAN CAMPEN, C, SIXMA, H. J, KERSSENS, J. J, PETERS, L, RASKER, J. J
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Oxford University Press 01-04-1998
• Subjects: Adolescent; Adult; Aged; Aged, 80 and over; Ambulatory Care - standards; Biological and medical sciences; Diseases of the osteoarticular system; Feasibility Studies; Female; Health Status Indicators; Humans; Male; Medical sciences; Middle Aged; Miscellaneous. Osteoarticular involvement in other diseases; Netherlands; Organizational Policy; Patient Participation; Patient Satisfaction - statistics & numerical data; Quality of Health Care - classification; Reproducibility of Results; Rheumatic Diseases - therapy; Surveys and Questionnaires - standards; Treatment Outcome; Netherlands; Questionnaire; Methodology; Self evaluation; Diseases of the osteoarticular system; Autoimmune disease; Bone disease; Inflammatory joint disease; Health service; Epidemiology; Spondylarthropathy; Osteoporosis; Quality; Degenerative disease; Public health; Ankylosing spondylitis; Human; Immunopathology; Patient; Test reliability; Test validation; Chronic; Rheumatoid arthritis; Arthropathy; Reliability; Osteoarthritis
• ISSN: 0263-7103; 1460-2172; 1460-2172
• DOI: 10.1093/rheumatology/37.4.362

Patient views on the quality of care have always been assessed by means of patient satisfaction questionnaires. The objectives of this study were to develop an instrument that would: (1) produce more specific data on health care services; (2) produce data that are related to the needs and expectations of individual clients; (3) contain items that had been formulated in collaboration with patients; (4) measure quality of health care services from the perspective of customers; (5) produce data on generic items and on disease-specific items of health care services. The instrument, developed for measuring the quality of care from the perspective of non-institutionalized rheumatic patients (QUOTE-Rheumatic-Patients), was evaluated in 425 non-institutionalized patients suffering from rheumatic diseases. The internal consistency of the subscales, the presumed factor structure and the feasibility of the instrument were evaluated. The development of this instrument resulted in a self-administered questionnaire on the quality of health care from the perspective of non-institutionalized rheumatic patients, which contains proper scientific characteristics and provides specific information for practical quality assurance policies.