Study of the relationships of physical and mental health to patient satisfaction.

This study examined the relationships of patients' self-report of their physical and mental health to their satisfaction with care received during recent hospitalization. These associations were examined within and across 11 service groups in a mid-Atlantic academic medical center. The sample size of 944 patients was distributed among the service groups, with 68-105 patients in each service. The instruments were a portion of the institution's patient satisfaction survey and the SF-12 (a 12-item generic measure of health status), both administered through telephone interviews. Across all hospital services, the relationships between satisfaction and health were too weak to interpret, with only 0.36% and 0.81% of the variance explained between overall satisfaction with care delivery and physical and mental health, respectively. At the service level, however, a number of significant but weak associations were found between satisfaction and health status in the otolaryngology, orthopedic, cardiothoracic, and transplant populations. Mental health and patients' likelihood to return to the hospital were negatively correlated in the neurology/neurosurgery populations, indicating that at higher levels of mental function, patients reported lower likelihood of their returning to the hospital.