Department of Paediatric Dentistry * Department of Experimental Medicine La Sapienza University of Rome, Italy e-mail: antonella.polimeni@uniroma1.it Organisation for Standardization that, with the ISO standard 8402, unifies the two approaches, defining Quality Control as “the operational techniques and activities that are used to fulfill requirements for quality” [ISO 8402, 1994]. The quality of a service should be determined through the following five elements or dimensions that concur to its definition. - The structures: conceived not only as infrastructures, but also as instruments and staff (professional and organisation). - The process: as activities carried out by several corporate functions and aimed to satisfy customer’s needs. - The cost of production and delivery: it is evident that a product/service/performance supplied at a high cost will be accessible to a limited number of clients, particularly within the public service. - The outcome: the result of a process is a service or a product. When the service has qualitative values it can be referred to as outcome. Introduction The concept of quality of Healthcare services. Healthcare management requires optimisation of the quality of services offered. Donabedian [1980] defines quality of care as the best possible management of the trade-off between benefits and risks, both on an individual and community level, stating: “Quality of care is the degree to which health services for individuals and populations increase the likelihood of desired health outcomes and are consistent with current professional knowledge”. Palmer underlined the role of quality as satisfaction of health needs that takes into consideration the resources involved [Bonardi et al., 1994]. In line with this thinking, we can refer to the broader definition of the International Evaluation of customer satisfaction at the Department of Paediatric Dentistry of “Sapienza” University of Rome G. IERARDO, V. LUZZI, A. VESTRI*, G.L. SFASCIOTTI, A. POLIMENI ABSTRACT. Aim Healthcare facility management requires the optimisation of the quality of services offered. Methods The Authors adopted a questionnaire as a means to assess customer satisfaction and needs. The Questionnaire has been designed to address adults, i.e., parents or guardians of children attending the Paediatric unit as patients. To estimate their degree of satisfaction,either regarding the environment where children are treated or about the direct interactions between the parents and the structure (waiting room, waiting time, treatment time and time needed to make the payments, costs, etc.), the questionnaire was submitted to a sample of approximately 600 customers, between March and June of 2005. Results On one hand results provide a pleasant confirmation on customers’perception of the service, especially regarding the direct relationship between the parties; on the other, they highlight aspects that could be improved (waiting room, optimisation of waiting time), distinguishing between factors that need extra funding to be implemented, and those that, instead, could be simply improved through a better and more efficient organisation of labour and time. Conclusion The present analysis and previous experiences confirm that appraisal of the degree of customers’ satisfaction by means of questionnaires is a valid and necessary instrument for the quality improvement of a healthcare service. Doing so, economic and human resources can be more efficiently allocated. KEYWORDS: Health quality; Efficacy; Efficiency, Set of questions. 30 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PAEDIATRIC DENTISTRY • 1/2008