Geriuldas Žiliukas, Danguolė Drungilienė, Rima Užkurėlytė, Ligija Švedienė

Abstract

As the quality of health care is getting better, patients’ demands for medics and health care organizations are getting higher. The permanent growth of costs and limited resources force to look for new possibilities of problem solving. Insufficient capacity of the leaders of a health care institution in matters of health care management and low motivation of the personnel leads to dissatisfaction by the provided services to patients and personnel. There was a patient opinion research made, a Picker Institute Europe questionnaire was used for the survey. 138 patients were interviewed, who, by their characteristics, represented all patients, treated in Hospital X all year round. Microsoft Office Excel 2010 and SPSS Statistics version 17.0 programs were used for the analysis of research data. During the research, it emerged that the majority of patients (78,7 percent) rated the conditions of care in the hospital as very good or good. Most of patients are satisfied with provided services of the hospital. Positive opinion of the patients on the care quality in the hospital was influenced by close communication with medics, providing clear information about their health situation and treatment, the respect shown by the personnel determined the trust in medics. Although, patients were actively involved in the treatment process, about one third of them did not participate in making decisions about their health situation or treatment; every fifth hospitalized patient by a planned order did not have an ability to choose a treatment institution. More than a half of patients, who participated in the research, did not have an opportunity to choose their doctor, or did not know about this opportunity. The development of patient’s and juridical knowledge creates preconditions to improve the quality of health care services.

Keyword(s): health care quality; patients’ point of view; quality of care
DOI: 10.5200/sm-hs.2013.027
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