Abstract
BackgroundPatients' feedback is of great importance in health care policy decisions. The Consumer Quality Index Cataract Questionnaire (CQI Cataract) was used to measure patients' experiences with quality of care after a cataract operation. This study aims to evaluate the reliability and the dimensional structure of this questionnaire and assesses its ability to measure differences between hospitals in patients' experiences with quality of care.MethodsSurvey data of 4,635 respondents were available. An exploratory factor analysis was performed to evaluate the construct validity of the questionnaire and item-correlations and inter-factor correlations were calculated. Secondly, Cronbach's alpha coefficients were calculated to assess the internal consistency of the scales. Thirdly, to evaluate the ability of the questionnaire to discriminate between hospitals, multilevel analyses were performed with patients hierarchically nested within hospitals.ResultsExploratory factor analysis resulted in 14 quality of care items subdivided over three factors (i.e. communication with ophthalmologist, communication with nurses, and communication about medication). Cronbach's alpha coefficients of 0.89, 0.76 and 0.79 indicated good internal consistency. Multilevel analyses showed that the questionnaire was able to measure differences in patients' experiences with hospital care regarding communication with ophthalmologist and communication about medication. In addition, there was variation between hospitals regarding ophthalmologist ratings, hospital ratings and one dichotomous information item.ConclusionThese findings suggest that the CQI Cataract is a reliable and valid instrument. This instrument can be used to measure patients' experiences with three domains of hospital care after a cataract operation and is able to assess differences in evaluated care between hospitals.
Highlights
Patients' feedback is of great importance in health care policy decisions
To be able to measure both performance and importance of quality aspects on widely used scales, this paper proposes a new instrument for measuring patients' experiences with quality of care after a cataract operation: the Consumer Quality Index Cataract (CQI Cataract)
Analytic approach In this paper we focus on patients' experiences with quality of hospital care and we only used the CQI Cataract Experience and selected the 41 items measuring quality aspects of hospital care
Summary
The Consumer Quality Index Cataract Questionnaire (CQI Cataract) was used to measure patients' experiences with quality of care after a cataract operation. This study aims to evaluate the reliability and the dimensional structure of this questionnaire and assesses its ability to measure differences between hospitals in patients' experiences with quality of care. Managed competition between health insurance organizations has been introduced in several industrialized countries [1]. In the Netherlands, consumers have a free choice of health insurers. Competition between insurers is possible with respect to premiums and quality of contracted providers. Competition is expected to take place on the basis of prices (premiums), the service quality of insurers, and the quality of the (page number not for citation purposes). BMC Ophthalmology 2007, 7:14 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2415/7/14 care providers that they contract [3]. Transparent information about the performance of health care providers plays a key role in the Dutch system
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