Last update:
   03-Jun-2020
 

Arch Hellen Med, 37(3), May-June 2020, 361-366

ORIGINAL PAPER

Evaluation by patients of the quality of health services

A. Papageorgiou,1 P. Galanis,2 V. Papanikolaou,3 A. Skitsou,4 D. Kaitelidou,2 G. Charalambous4,5
1General Hospital of Katerini, Katerini, Greece,
2Department of Nursing, Center for Health Services Management and Evaluation, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece,
3Department of Public Health Policies, School of Public Health, University of West Attica, Athens, Greece,
4Frederick University, Nicosia, Cyprus,
5Department of Emergencies, "Hippocration" General Hospital, Athens, Greece

OBJECTIVE Evaluation of the quality of health services from the perspective of hospital patients.

METHOD A crosssectional study was conducted with a sample of 102 patients in a general hospital in Thessaloniki between February and April 2019. The Servqual questionnaire was used for data collection. Participation was anonymous and with informed consent. Data analysis was performed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (IBM SPSS), version 24.0.

RESULTS The mean age of the 102 participants was 56 years and 68% were male. The overall evaluation of the quality of health services according to the patients' responses to the Servqual questionnaire was quite high. No differences were demonstrated depending on the demographic characteristics of the patients in either the perceived quality of services or the expected quality. Patients who considered themselves in good health gave a higher rating for the quality of services regarding responsiveness than patients who were in mediocre or poor health. Patients in poor health wanted better quality services regarding the logistics than patients in mediocre or good health.

CONCLUSIONS The opinion of patients regarding the hospital services was very good. A fundamental prerequisite for health systems should be the continuing assessment and improvement of services in order to satisfy the needs and expectations of users.

Key words: Patient satisfaction, Quality of services, Servqual model.

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