Assessing patient satisfaction across the continuum of ambulatory care: a revalidation and validation of care-specific surveys.

The need to develop reliable and valid measures of patient satisfaction in ambulatory care settings is underscored by the rapid growth and changes in this health care arena as well as the requirement to monitor and gauge quality of care. The purpose of this article is to provide evidence for the reliability and validity of patient satisfaction questionnaires designed specifically for three points of care across the ambulatory care continuum. These points are outpatient testing and physical therapy services, outpatient surgery, and home health care. The present effort represents an evaluation of revised questionnaires for the first two points and an initial assessment of the psychometric properties of the questionnaire for the third. The present results support the internal reliability and construct validity of each questionnaire. In addition, differences were found on select facility characteristics based on each questionnaire.