Who Will Take Care of Us? Exploring Differences in Respondents’ Satisfaction with Primary Care vs Specialty Care Physicians

Objective

Our study explored perceived patient satisfaction with either primary care or specialist physicians to identify factors accounting for the differences.

Study Design

The data were collected from an Internet-based survey, DrScore.com, for measuring patient satisfaction with physicians. Participants found their doctors through the DrScore search engine and rated their physicians with anonymity. A total satisfaction score was the sum of scores based on 9 physician rating items and then was scaled to the range of 0-100. Logistic regressions were used to analyze associations between patient satisfaction (score ≥70) and various factors.

Results

The mean satisfaction score was 79.4 for primary care (n = 11,558) and 75.5 for specialty care (n = 11,068) (P > .05). Nearly 50% of primary care patients waited for 0-2 days to get an appointment, while more than 50% of specialty care patients waited for more than 6 days. As waiting days became longer than 2 weeks, patient ratings of specialty care were lower than those of primary care. Patients (≥45 years) were 24% less likely to be satisfied with primary care (P < .01) but 40% more likely with specialty care (P < .01) than patients (<25 years).

Conclusions

Although differences in overall patient satisfaction with primary and specialty care were not observed, more specialists obtained extremely low satisfaction scores than primary care providers did. Age and factors related to waiting time for the visit or time spent with a doctor were associated with patient satisfaction with physicians.