Antecedents of community stakeholder satisfaction towards an Australian drug clinic

The aim of the study was to investigate the antecedents of community satisfaction towards an Australian drug clinic, with the aim of developing a general model of community stakeholder satisfaction that may apply to other clinics. A structured survey was administered via the telephone and face to face with 490 community stakeholders including residents, businesses and other health and community service providers. Multilingual interviewers were used because a large percentage of participants were from a non-English-speaking background. Community stakeholder satisfaction was found to correlate positively with variables such as stakeholder's perception of the importance of services, understanding of community needs, contribution to community, usefulness of communication, and staff skill. The antecedents related to quality of service, rather than to knowledge of the clinic, showed consistently stronger correlations with overall satisfaction. Stakeholders were least aware of the clinic's services that were rated the most important and given the highest satisfaction scores. It is concluded that regular surveying of community attitudes helps a clinic to modify its services to meet the needs of its community more accurately. Surveying can also provide early warning of growing problems that may, if left unresolved, impede future survival or growth of the clinic.