Introduction : Client satisfaction with services is an important factor and one of the main elements in continuous service quality assurance and improvement. The goal of the present study was to determine and compare the client satisfaction and its components in governmental and private addiction treatment centers in Kordestan province.

Methods: In a cross-sectional descriptive-analytic study, 377 subjects were selected with a stratified random method from clients of all addiction treatment centers in Kordestan province (five private and two governmental centers) who had an active treatment record. Our data collection tool was a researcher-developed questionnaire. The second part of the questionnaire contained the main satisfaction assessment questions, which were five-level Likert type. Chi square, Mann-Whitney U, Kolmogorov-Smirnov, Kruskal-Wallis, and Spearman's correlation coefficient were used for statistical analysis.

Results: The most important results were that satisfaction with the physical environment, accessibility, personnels' communication skills, medical services, and psychological consultation services were significantly higher in private centers than those in governmental centers while satisfaction with social-work services, cost of services, and the”general satisfaction” of clients were significantly higher in governmental centers. The “overall satisfaction” which was the sum of different components of satisfaction, except the general satisfaction, did not show any significant difference between the private and governmental centers.

Conclusion: It seems that the importance and weight of the different components of satisfaction vary in the opinion of clients. Those services that are more supportive in nature, have a more positive influence on satisfaction of patients and weigh more than other components. In fact this explains the difference between the results of ”overall satisfaction” and ” general satisfaction”.

 Hakim Research Journal 2008 11(1): 48- 53.