OBJECTIVES: Few reports of dialysis patient satisfaction with care have been published. Dialysis Clinic, Inc. (DCI), a nation-wide, not-for-profit dialysis provider, devised a patient satisfaction questionnaire (PSQ) for routine administration. It contains 9 items with a Likert response scale of excellent to poor assessing patient perspectives on: staff, treatment, professionalism, teamwork, respect, timeliness, involvement, the clinic, and overall satisfaction. Based upon available literature, we hypothesized that older patients, women, whites, and peritoneal dialysis (PD) patients would be more satisfied. METHODS: We examined PSQ results obtained by self-administration between April 1999 and March 2000. The item for overall satisfaction was used in these analyses. Because of uneven distribution, responses were analyzed as a dichotomized variable of excellent and very good (EVG) or good, fair and poor (GFP). Patients excluded were either not present at administration, cognitively impaired, or non-English speaking. Differences in continuous variables were analyzed by Wilcoxon Rank Sum test and those for categorical variables utilized Chi-square testing. RESULTS: N=7,037, 40.4% =65 years, 53.2% male, 48.8% white, and 13.4% on PD. 76.4% had a score of EVG. Patients =65 years were more satisfied (79.5% scoring EVG) than patients <65 (74.2% scoring EVG) (p=<0.0001). There was no significant difference between men and women. White patients (84.7% scoring EVG) were more satisfied than non-white patients (68.4% scoring EVG) (p=<0.0001). PD patients (93.6% scoring EVG) were more satisfied than hemodialysis patients (73.7% scoring EVG) (p=<0.0001). CONCLUSION: The sample population is representative of the overall United States dialysis population except for a lower percentage of white patients reported. This study indicates older patients, whites, and PD patients were more satisfied than other dialysis patients. Any group comparisons of satisfaction in this population should adjust for demographic factors. This will assist with the incorporation of patient involvement into healthcare delivery.