Survey of Healthcare Experiences of Patients -- Dental Care Patient Satisfaction Survey (DPSS)

The mission of the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) is to provide high quality medical and dental care to eligible Veterans. Executive Order 12862, dated September 11, 1993, calls for the establishment and implementation of customer service standards, and for agencies to “survey customers to determine the kind and quality of services they want and their level of satisfaction with current services.” The overall purpose of the VHA Office of Dentistry Dental Patient Satisfaction Survey is to systematically obtain information from patients that can be used to identify problems or complaints that need attention and to improve the quality of dental health care services delivered to Veterans. The Office of Dentistry (OOD) currently tracks a number of clinical parameters indicative of quality care (e.g., appropriate use of fluoride products in high caries risk patients, frequency of dental examinations and care provided to medically compelling patients); however, patient satisfaction with this care is not specifically measured. Information obtained from this dental survey will be made readily available to VA Central Office (VACO), Veterans Integrated Service Network (VISN), VHA field staff, and stakeholders as part of the Network Performance Report and via the VA Intranet. This data will be used to demonstrate that VA is providing timely, high quality health care services to patients and to measure improvement toward performance goals. The VHA program office has now included an electronic version of the survey, which is ready to be implemented as an online option for collecting survey responses. Also, changes were made to some survey questions, including updates to the Race & Ethnicity options to reflect current collection requirements.

The latest form for Survey of Healthcare Experiences of Patients -- Dental Care Patient Satisfaction Survey (DPSS) expires 2026-06-30 and can be found here.