Outpatient Satisfaction with Tertiary Hospitals in China: The Role of Sociodemographic Characteristics

China’s increasing attention to patient satisfaction evaluation is part of an international trend of patient-centered healthcare. Patient sociodemographic characteristics are important intrinsic factors that will influence satisfaction. This paper aims to better understand how sociodemographic factors affect Chinese patient satisfaction with tertiary outpatient services using data from the 2017 China National Patient Survey. A total of 28,760 outpatient survey responses were analyzed, spanning 136 tertiary hospitals across 31 provinces. Multilevel logistic regression with fixed hospital effects was used to examine the association of patient satisfaction across multiple healthcare domains with sociodemographic factors. Results show that patients who were of a migrant population, of highest income, most educated, and who had medical aid insurance reported the lowest levels of overall satisfaction. Specifically, increasing age was correlated with decreased satisfaction in process management and affordability domains, while high-income and high-education outpatients reported lower satisfaction scores in the hospital environment domain. Furthermore, migrant patients experienced lower satisfaction across several domains. These intricate findings suggest that hospitals should tailor their services and evaluation metrics to specific patient demographics, and that the government should adopt policies that reduce disparities in healthcare access and affordability to ultimately improve the satisfaction of vulnerable groups.