A Study on the Experience of Patients regarding the Quality of Healthcare services provided in the Alipurduar District of India.

BACKGROUND

Patient experience is considered an important tool to measure the quality of healthcare, which is a treatment efficiency and effectiveness outcome. This study aims to measure the level of quality provided by three hospitals in Alipurduar District, India with a focus on the patient satisfaction and to identify inequality of service received by patients from different backgrounds.

METHODS

By using stratified random sampling technique and seven points Likert scale, the required primary data were collected from the patients of these hospitals with a selected sample size of 300 patients. Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) was used in grouping the items and Multiple Linear Regression, ANOVA, and T-test were used for analysing the data.

RESULTS

The services delivered in these hospitals moderately (4.660 ± .787) satisfy the patients, showing an average quality of healthcare. Therefore, patients from better income groups tend to have paid caregivers to provide better care. Moreover, quality of healthcare has a significant impact (R = .770) on patient satisfaction which varied between respondent groups, indicating inequality in the services delivered.

CONCLUSIONS

In these Govt. hospitals where every patient has an equal right to receive quality care, due to the inequality in the patients' socio-economic background, this is still not possible. Hospital authorities should improve the quality of healthcare by identifying deficiencies and by taking feedback from patients.