Hospital Integration: A State of Evidence for Patient Satisfaction

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Hospital integration boosts coordination of care and patient safety. This study aimed to assess the effect of the hospital integration of four domains; physicians, midwives, laboratory, and IT on patient/consumer satisfaction. MATERIAL AND METHOD: The samples were drawn from NABH Accredited hospitals in the western states of India. Nine integrated hospitals were compared with nine non-integrated hospitals. Patient satisfaction was considered the latent variable. NABH toolkit and a pre-designed, structured questionnaire were used to get the objective of the study. RESULT: Two sample paired t-test was performed to find a significant difference between integrated and non-integrated services relate to patient satisfaction. As an observed variables experience with a nurse (p= 0.00), support staff (p=0.08), discharge process (p=0.04), Final billing amount (p=0.00), and favorable outcome/length of stay (p=0.00) were found significantly associated. Mann-Whitney Wilcoxon was performed to find the reliability and validity of the data. CONCLUSION: Integration of allied services in Hospitals has the potential to influence the array of outcomes of the hospitals. The move from a non-integrated to an integrated hospital can accelerate access to care.