Evaluation of customer satisfaction at the Department of Paediatric Dentistry of "Sapienza" University of Rome

Aim Healthcare facility management requires the optimisation of the quality of services offered. Methods The Authors adopted a questionnaire as a means to assess customer satisfaction and needs. The Questionnaire has been designed to address adults, i.e., parents or guardians of children attending the Paediatric unit as patients. To estimate their degree of satisfaction, either regarding the environment where children are treated or about the direct interactions between the parents and the structure (waiting room, waiting time, treatment time and time needed to make the payments, costs, etc.), the questionnaire was submitted to a sample of approximately 600 customers, between March and June of 2005. Results On one hand results provide a pleasant confirmation on customers' perception of the service, especially regarding the direct relationship between the parties; on the other, they highlight aspects that could be improved (waiting room, optimisation of waiting time), distinguishing between factors that need extra funding to be implemented, and those that, instead, could be simply improved through a better and more efficient organisation of labour and time. Conclusion The present analysis and previous experiences confirm that appraisal of the degree of customers' satisfaction by means of questionnaires is a valid and necessary instrument for the quality improvement of a healthcare service. Doing so, economic and human resources can be more efficiently allocated.