Abstract: Objective To understand the satisfaction degree of tuberculosis (TB) patients on designated hospitals, and to provide reference for designated hospital model improvement.  Methods Forty designated hospitals in which designated hospital model launched in October 2009 in Global Fund TB program area were enrolled in this study. 907 questionnaires were sent to TB patients and 795 effective questionnaires were retrieved, and the effective rate of questionnaire was 99.38%. TB patients’ information of diagnosis and treatment were attained through medical record and satisfaction degree on designated hospitals through questionnaires. The satisfaction degree of different types of patients was compared by chi-square test, 0.05 was set as the criteria of statistically significant difference. Results Of 795 TB patients, 94.65% (752/795) of the patients wanted to recommend designated hospital to their relatives with TB. The diminishing sequence of satisfaction degree on all aspects of designated hospitals was medical technology (86.79%, 690/795), service attitude (86.79%, 690/795), health promotion (83.02%, 660/795), treatment process (76.60%, 609/795), outpatient environment (73.84%, 587/795), effect of health promotion (73.21%, 582/795) and expenses (41.89%, 333/795). The satisfaction degree of sputum smear positive TB patients on medical technology, effect of health promotion and expenses (82.76%, 264/319; 69.59%, 222/319; 36.99%, 118/319) were all lower than those of sputum smear negative TB patients (89.43%, 423/473; 75.90%, 359/473; 45.45%, 215/473) (χ² values were 7.371, 4.673 and 5.436 respectively, and all P values were lower than 0.05). TB patients supervised taking medicine had higher satisfaction degree on health promotion (84.16%, 558/663) than those without supervision (75.76%, 100/132) (χ²=4.195, P<0.05). The proportion of affordable expenses of TB patients supervised taking medicine (39.06%, 259/663) was lower than those without supervision (55.30%, 73/132) (χ²=12.944, P<0.001). Conclusion Although the designated hospital model obtains the approval of most of TB patients, it still needs to improve the outpatient environment and treatment process, and to carry out the free diagnosis and treatment policy for TB patients, in order to further improve the TB patients’ satisfaction.

Key words: Tuberculosis, pulmonary, Physician&, rsquo, s practice patterns, Patient satisfaction, Hospitals, special