Patient satisfaction
Quality Management
Definition. Patient satisfaction is the patient’s evaluation of whether care met their expectations, covering aspects such as communication, waiting, environment and outcomes.
Explanation
Satisfaction is widely measured but strongly influenced by expectations, so it is an imperfect quality measure. In the digital era, satisfaction also depends on digital literacy and inclusion, which can be framed within the Donabedian model (Geada & Alturas, 2026). At organisational level, studies link leadership and capacity utilisation to satisfaction scores (Belasen et al., 2023).
Many organisations now combine satisfaction surveys with experience measures that ask about specific events.
Related concepts
Patient experience SERVQUAL Patient-reported experience measures (PREMs) Donabedian model
Read on The Health Topics
- The Concept of Digital Inclusion: A Conceptual and Integrative Introduction from the Perspective of Health Sciences and Health Management
- Who Should Run the Hospital? Eight Positions and What Sixty Years of Evidence Leaves Standing
References
Belasen, A., Belasen, A., & Feng, Z. (2023). The physician CEO advantage and hospital performance during the COVID-19 pandemic: Capacity utilization and patient satisfaction. Journal of Health Organization and Management, 37(3), 313–326. https://doi.org/10.1108/jhom-04-2022-0126
Geada, N., & Alturas, B. (2026). Patient satisfaction in the digital health era: Digital literacy and digital inclusion perspective under the Donabedian framework. Education for Information. https://doi.org/10.1177/01678329261427324
Cite this entry: Kurutkan, M. N. (2026). Patient satisfaction. In The Health Topics glossary. https://healthtopic.org/glossary/patient-satisfaction/