General hospital patients’ satisfaction with a proactive automatized multiple health behavior change intervention

Behavior change interventions targeting multiple health risk behaviors are needed to reduce the burden of non-communicable diseases. This study investigates general hospital patients’ satisfaction with process and outcome of a proactive automatized lifestyle intervention and whether characteristics of the patients (i.e. age, sex, level of school education, number of health risk behaviors, presence of any non-communicable disease) are associated with intervention satisfaction. Between May and July 2022, all 18- to 64-year-old patients in five medical departments at the University Medicine Hospital Greifswald, Germany were systematically approached. The intervention included individualized computer-generated feedback letters regarding patients’ individual profile of health risk behaviors, and tailored to the current motivational stage of change. Feedback was scheduled to be delivered after baseline, month 1 and month 3. Of 175 intervention participants, 135 (77.1%) participated in the follow-up after 8 months, and reported on satisfaction with intervention process and outcome. Associations of overall satisfaction with patient characteristics were analyzed using linear regression analysis. 81% (n = 107) of all follow-up participants rated the entire intervention as good or very good; and 94.0% (n = 124) reported no experienced discomfort linked to the intervention participation. Mean satisfaction was 2.9 (SD = 0.8, range 0–4). Low level of school education (p = 0.02) was positively related to intervention satisfaction. General hospital patients, and those with low level of school in particular, were rather satisfied with a proactive multiple health behavior change intervention containing computer-generated stage-tailored written feedback. Findings highlight patients’ positive perceptions of proactively delivered and individually tailored feedback on their health risk behaviors; and support the implementation of proactive multiple health behavior change interventions as part of routine health care. ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT05365269 on May 9, 2022.