Evaluation of services of the integrative health clinic in Hong Kong

Aims.  (i) To provide a profile of the clients who have used the Integrative Health Clinic’s services, (ii) to determine the clients’ extent of satisfaction with the services received and (iii) to assess whether integrative therapies can/should be recommended to other clinics.Background.  Based on the integration of various health paradigms and the use of health promotion strategies, our Integrative Health Clinic in Hong Kong provides a range of different therapies for integrated symptom management. The integrative therapies are derived from conventional, complementary and alternative medicine.Design.  Postal survey, followed by routine data analysis.Method.  Hong Kong Chinese clients attending a residential community health clinic were surveyed about health status and satisfaction towards the services received.Results.  A total of 489 clients (30·8% were male and 69·2% female) were registered with the clinic during the study period. The mean age (SD) was 47·8 (15·4) years. The customer satisfaction survey found that traditional Chinese medicine consultation was the most frequently used modality of the Integrative Health Clinic, followed by pain management. Out of the 489 clients, those who attended the Integrative Health Clinic only once in the study period for an annual health assessment and those who died during the period were excluded from the survey, giving a total of 276 eligible clients. Out of the 276 clients, 52·5% (128) responded to the survey that asked them to evaluate their satisfaction with the services received at the clinic and the performance of the clinic’s practitioners who interacted with them. For practitioner performance, the percentage of respondents who gave a rating of satisfaction was found to range between 86·3–64·3%, while the percentage of respondents who gave a rating of dissatisfaction ranged from 13·7–35·7%. Overall, the survey found that most aspects of the Integrative Health Clinic’s services were rated as satisfactory.Conclusion.  The overwhelming satisfaction of clients with the services they received at the Integrative Health Clinic suggests that this integrative health services model could be considered for adoption in other clinics in Hong Kong and perhaps the region.Relevance to clinical practice.  It is necessary to review the use of integrative therapies so as to provide more data for the evaluation of this increasingly popular modality of health services.