Development of the Korean primary care assessment tool--measuring user experience: tests of data quality and measurement performance

Abstract

Objective: To develop a tool for assessing the performance of primary care services in South Korea from the patient's perspective and to test the validity of the tool under the conceptual framework of the recently developed definition of primary care in Korea.

Design: Item development for questionnaire and a cross-sectional survey for tool validation at 16 primary care clinics. All family physicians included in this study were required to have practiced at their current clinic for at least 2 years.

Participants: A nine expert panel was assembled for tool development and patients (or guardians) who had visited their primary care clinic on six or more occasions over a period of more than 6 months participated in the survey.

Main outcome measures: Scores corresponding to each domain of primary care.

Results: A total of 722 effective data sets were used for the analysis. Five items were eliminated from the preliminary 30-item tool after expert discussions at two seminars. Another four items were eliminated by principle component analysis. For each of the four domains (comprehensiveness, coordination function, personalized care, and family/community orientation), tests of scaling assumptions were well satisfied by all Likert-scaled measures. On the other hand, 'first contact' turned out to be a composite domain with five independent single-item scales.

Conclusion: The Korean primary care assessment tool (version 1) consists of four multi-item scales and one composite scale. Widespread application of this tool will provide an empirical basis for the measurement, monitoring and continuous improvement of primary care in South Korea.