Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Hospital: Inpatient’s Perceived Quality in Spain

Abstract

Although the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has generated a large amount of studies, the patient-perceived quality of care (PQ) in this context is still not well known, so more studies intending to focus on this issue are strongly needed. This study assesses changes on PQ in patients hospitalized in Spain during the first month of the COVID-19 pandemic and investigates differences between those admitted for this cause and the rest a descriptive study using the “Net Promoters Score” and the hospital regular monitoring plan. Due to this point of view, ethical approval is not applicable. Four PQ dimensions (nurse, physician, and nurse assistant actions [NA], and discharge information [DI]) were measured in all COVID patients (57) and in a sample of non-COVID patients (60) discharged at home during the first month of the pandemic, and also compared with another sample (384) from an immediately previous period. The COVID patients scored worse (8.2) than non-COVID ones (9.0; P