Patient Satisfaction with Process-Related Aspects of Outpatient Physiotherapy Care: Preliminary Insights from Croatia

Background: Patient satisfaction is an important indicator of healthcare quality, yet evidence on satisfaction with outpatient physiotherapy (OPT) in Croatian publicly funded primary care settings remains limited. Methods: This exploratory cross-sectional study examined patient evaluations of process-related aspects of OPT care and explored factors associated with variability in both composite and item-level ratings. A pragmatic composite process-related satisfaction score was calculated as the mean of 15 questionnaire items. Descriptive statistics, non-parametric group comparisons, exploratory multiple linear regression, and proportional-odds ordinal logistic regression sensitivity analyses were performed. Results: The final sample included 151 participants. Patient evaluations were highly favourable, with a median composite score of 4.87 (IQR = 0.43) and a mean of 4.69 ± 0.44. The highest ratings were observed for professional competence (4.91 ± 0.29), friendliness (4.89 ± 0.34), attentiveness (4.87 ± 0.39), and personalised treatment (4.84 ± 0.37). Greater variability and comparatively lower ratings were observed for self-introduction (4.38 ± 1.11), side-effect information (4.41 ± 1.02), and treatment explanation (4.52 ± 0.86). Educational attainment showed a nominal association with the composite score in bivariate analysis, but this did not remain statistically significant after correction for multiple testing. In exploratory multivariable analyses, male sex was nominally associated with higher self-introduction ratings, while previous treatment at the same facility was nominally associated with lower treatment-explanation ratings; however, no predictor-level association remained statistically significant after Holm correction. Explained variance across the linear regression models was modest (adjusted R2 = 0.035–0.085). Conclusions: Overall, patients reported highly favourable evaluations of process-related OPT care, while selected communication- and information-related items showed greater variability than the composite score. These preliminary findings support complementing composite scores with item-level assessment when examining patients’ experiences of outpatient physiotherapy care.