Comparing satisfaction with clinical genetic services to other health services using a standardized survey, the CSQ-8©

Abstract

We report the first large scale study of client satisfaction with clinical genetic services, employinga widely-used instrument, the Client Satisfaction Questionnaire(CSQ-8©)which allowed comparison of satisfaction with genetic services and published reports of satisfaction with a wide variety of other healthcare services. The CSQ-8© is a self-administered global measure of client satisfaction using 8 questions which are scored from 1 to 4, with higher scores indicating greater satisfaction. The CSQ-8® is scored by summing the individual items, producing a total score range of 8 to 32. This instrument has been used in a large number of studies, has well-established norms, excellent internal consistency, reliability and validity. The Southeastern Regional Genetics Group conducted a satisfaction survey of patients at multiple clinical genetics centers in the Southeast as part of a quality assurance program. A total of 1100 CSQ-8© forms were distributed to 10 participating clinical genetic centers. Over a 4 week period every patient seen, or their parents, were instructed to complete the anonymous survey by clinic staff after their Genetics visit. 455 surveys were returned. All 8 questions were completed on 449 of these forms, which were then used in the data analysis. The mean total satisfaction score for genetic clients was 30.15, (SD 2.66). This mean total score is higher than that of any published study of CSQ-8© scores in healthcare or counseling services. Two sample t-tests were used to determine if differences in the mean CSQ-8© scores existed between the current study and published reports of CSQ-8© scores from other healthcare services. All published studies analyzed had significantly lower mean CSQ-8© scores than this study, demonstrating that the genetic clients had better satisfaction. P-values ranged from 0.026 to less than 0.00001. High client satisfaction with genetic services should interest insurers and managed care contractors. The high satisfaction scores are particularly striking when one considers that the majority of clinical genetic encounters are new patient encounters, rather than patients involved in continuous care with the genetics team. Further analysis of this dataset will determine if satisfaction differed between pre-natal and non-prenatal visits. Future studies anticipated include testing hypotheses of causes of the high satisfaction, and assessing the use of CSQ-8 sub-item scores as a benchmarking tool between genetic centers.