Evaluation of health center's primary care responsiveness by patients with chronic illnesses

Abstract

Objective: To evaluate the health systems’ response capacity according to the perception of chronic patients, and the factors related to that perception. Method: Source of data: patients diagnosed with at least one chronic disease who visited primary care centers during June and July 2015 in a basic health area of La Rioja. Design: cross-sectional descriptive study based on interviews to over 18s who visited primary care centers. The dependent variable was the health systems’ response capacity and independent variables were sociodemographic and health related. In order to collect data, trained interviewers conducted a short questionnaire in Spanish from the World Health Organization Multi-country Survey Study with 403 subjects. Descriptive statistics, bivariate and multivariate logistic regression were performed. Results: The overall health systems’ response capacity was considered good by 87.10%. The domains that scored highest were: confidentiality (99.3%), dignity (98.3%) and communication (97.3%). Those evaluated worst were: rapid service (38,6%) and quality of basic services (31.8%). Low social class was the most important factor associated with the responsiveness, mainly with autonomy and rapid service. Sex, educational level, and occupation were related to communication domain, and patients with worse perceived health rated the general response worse. The domains considered most important were dignity (33.5%) and rapid service (30.5%). Conclusions: The domains best evaluated were those related to respect for people. Rapid service has a low health systems’ response capacity, but a high importance, and therefore requires priority action.