Health Policy 57 (2001) 155–164 Determinants of customer satisfaction with the health care system, with the possibility to choose a personal physician and with a family doctor in a transition country Janko Kersnik * Department of Family Medicine, Uniersity of Ljubljana, Koroska 2, SI -4280 Kranjska Gora, Sloenia Received 24 June 2000; accepted 6 January 2001 Abstract Many Eastern and Central European counties are reforming their health care systems. The aim of this study was to determine customer satisfaction with a reformed health care system, with the possibility of free choice of a family physician and patient satisfaction with the family physician in Slovenia and their major determinants. We used a postal survey of the patients who attended their family physician’s offices during the study period. We obtained an 84% response rate. Some 72.9% of the respondents were satisfied with the current organisation of health care services, 95.5% of the respondents were satisfied with the possibility of choosing their own family physician and 58% of participants were very satisfied with the level of care received from their personal family practitioners. It was shown that higher patient satisfaction with the family physician was the most powerful predictor of patients’ satisfaction with the health care system. The results show that health care reform in Slovenia has a positive impact on the consumers’ perceptions of health care quality, measured in terms of consumer satisfaction with the health care system, the possibility to choose a family physician and the overall satisfaction with the family physician. © 2001 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Family practice; Customer satisfaction; Eastern Europe; Health policy www.elsevier.com/locate/healthpol * Tel./fax: +386-4-5881426. E-mail address: janko.kersnik@s5.net (J. Kersnik). 0168-8510/01/$ - see front matter © 2001 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved. PII:S0168-8510(01)00118-X