Patient satisfaction survey as a tool towards quality improvement.

Over the past 20 years, patient satisfaction surveys have gained increasing attention as meaningful and essential sources of information for identifying gaps and developing an effective action plan for quality improvement in healthcare organizations. However, there are very few published studies reporting of the improvements resulting from feedback information of patient satisfaction surveys, and in most cases, these studies are contradictory in their findings. This article investigates in-depth a number of research studies that critically discuss the relationship of dependent and independent influential attributes towards overall patient satisfaction in addition to its impact on the quality improvement process of healthcare organizations.