Satisfaction with pregnancy and newborn care: development and results of a survey in a health maintenance organization.

Objective: To measure patient satisfaction with pregnancy and newborn care.
Study Design: To develop our survey, we reviewed domains of care that had been identified by national groups working to develop measures of satisfaction with care. Within these domains of care, items pertinent to pregnancy and newborn care were written, reviewed, and pilot tested in focus groups of women who had recently delivered a baby. A 24-item survey instrument was the result of this process.
Patients and Methods: We sent our survey to 2337 female members of the Southern California Kaiser Permanente Medical Care Program approximately 8 weeks after they had delivered a baby. The demographic and clinical characteristics of the respondents were compared with those of the nonrespondents.
Results: A total of 1017 women (44%) completed and returned the survey. Eighty-eight percent of the women who responded were very or somewhat satisfied with the care they received during their pregnancy and the newborn period. Women who responded differed from those who did not respond on infant birthweight, maternal age and education, and other variables. The results of our survey were forwarded to local quality managers and physicians.
Conclusion: Satisfaction with care is an important measure of quality of care. Many changes in the delivery system were made in response to the information provided by survey respondents, including offering alternative appointment times and scheduling postpartum appointments before hospital discharge. Our survey instrument, which assesses satisfaction with pregnancy and newborn care, might be useful for other health maintenance organizations for identifying areas where improvement in care is needed.