The traditional measures for quality of health care are rated by morbidity and mortality outcomes. But this approach is a little different in case of fertility care. The live birth rate or complication rate is the parameters counted in the case of fertility care outcome. In the current trend of healthcare practice, patients’ opinions have considered as a parameter in the evaluation of the quality of care in the hospital industry.
Healthcare experts want to provide patient-centered quality care to enhance the consistent growth of this industry. Certain standardized methods, like the Picker Patient Experience questionnaire and the Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems, have been developed to obtain feedback from patients. These patients' feedback is considered as an additional outcome of the provided treatment as quality care assessments. Simultaneously, these quality care aspects are discovered to meet the requirement of attention and improvement.
Three domains of patient-level at the fertility care are repeatedly found out, which include
- Demographic characteristics, such as higher woman age
- Type of treatment received, for example, IVF
- Health status, which is considered both mental (anxiety level) and general health (attainment of pregnancy) status.
Factors like emotional support, the attitude of the doctor and diagnostic organizations are associated with positive experiences to achieve a pregnancy. The inclusion of a separate fertility consultation hour in the organization of care at the clinical level of fertility treatment provides a significant determinant. Clinic size may not be an associated experience for couples who have looked for fertility care, but a separate fertility consultation, which gives them positive experiences regarding emotional support is to increase patient satisfaction.
Research experts have recommended that health status is a fundamental determinant of patient satisfaction. Higher anxiety levels and a patient's depression are evident with the patient's dissatisfaction with care. However, social attributes, marital stress can increase the anxiety level of the patient and have a negative impact and lower patient satisfaction. Therefore, these aspects need to check during patient experiences on fertility care. A prominent aspect of increasing patient satisfaction is the lower depression score.
Following are some determinates of patient's satisfactions are as follows:
- Organization aspects of a clinic, which also include patients to obtain fertility care from their preferred clinic or not.
- Provision of information about the fertility treatment aspects, which include written sufficient information about the possible cause of infertility, side effects of the medications and future treatment plan.
- Emotional support obtains from the clinical team, an additional appointment with psychologists and social workers to clear out all the mental clouds.
- Patient's waiting period outside the doctor's chamber.
- A doctor's attitude, which includes behavior, appearance, listening power, explanation capacity, shows interest to treat the patient, hopeful to get the positive outcome.
- The diagnostic organization includes the explanation before commencing the procedure, duration of the procedure, the time required to obtain the test result.
Therefore patient satisfaction level for fertility care depends upon both patient and clinic levels. Fertility care experts should organize the overall treatment procedure for every patient as an individual and tailored care according to the need of the patient to increase the patient's satisfaction.