Physician satisfaction with care to cardiovascular diseases in the municipalities of Minas Gerais: Cardiosatis-TEAM Scale.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate psychometric validity and reliability properties of the CARDIOSATIS-Team scale and measure physician satisfaction before and after the implementation of the project. This scale was designed to evaluate physician satisfaction with the healthcare delivered for cardiovascular diseases in cities that participate in a telemedicine system.
METHODS: The scale was applied in 82 cities of Minas Gerais, before and after the implementation of a telecardiology system. The analysis of the psychometric properties of CARDIOSATIS-Team scale included: construct validity using factorial analysis; internal consistency reliability using Cronbach's Alpha; Pearson's correlation between items; Spearman's correlation between domains and global scale and; discriminant analysis.
RESULTS: The factor analysis of the principal components extracted two factors that explained 66.5% of the variance in satisfaction scores: healthcare delivery and diagnosis structure and satisfaction with the care delivered. Cronbach's Alfa for internal consistency reliability of the scale showed values of 0.92 for the global scale and up to 0.84 for factors. Inter-factor and inter-scale correlations were adequate, showing values of 0.59 to 0.89 and 0.73 to 0.85, respectively. The scale was able to distinguish the two moments of its application (before and after intervention), showing high satisfaction for most items measured afterwards (p < 0.05).
CONCLUSIONS: We can conclude based on the present study that the telemedicine system improved provider satisfaction and that the CARDIOSATIS-Team scale is a good tool to evaluate provider satisfaction with care delivered for CVD. Its appropriate characteristics in terms of validity and internal consistency reliability justify its utilization in other studies.