A novel method to evaluate quality of care from the perspective of cataract patients.

Purpose: To evaluate quality of care from patient's perspective following cataract surgery using a novel questionnaire and to assess validity of the survey in context with the identification of lacks in quality of care.

Methods: Assessment of quality of care in 150 patients (150 eyes) who underwent cataract surgery in an Austrian clinical setting based on a novel "Quality of Care from Patient's perspective following Cataract Surgery" (QCPCS)-questionnaire including 10 subjective, 10 objective and 7 general health care criteria. Quality of care was graded according to importance (range: 1 = not important to 4 = extremely important) and frequency of occurrence (range: 1 = never to 4 = often, 0 = not applicable). Quality-impact indices (QI-respective grading by patient/4) were assessed.

Results: Mean performance score was 3.84 (SD = 0.42, range: 1-4). Mean QI was 0.89 for subjective, 0.90 for objective and 0.96 for general health care criteria (p = 0.29). All-over skewness and coefficient of variation were -2.65 and 5.85 respectively. Internal consistency was high (Cronbach's α = 0.75) confirming causal taxonomy of disease-specific and generic items.

Conclusion: A valid new method to reliably and holistically evaluate patient's satisfaction related to cataract surgery including a broad range of patient needs is presented, suitable to assess potential lacks in quality of health care in daily ophthalmological clinical practice.