Healthcare users' evaluations of general practice: a survey among Danish men aged 45-70 years.

BACKGROUND

Knowledge about healthcare users' evaluations of general practice is relatively limited.

AIM

We aimed to investigate Danish men's evaluations of general practice health care and different aspects of GPs' communication with patients.

DESIGN & SETTING: Secondary analyses of data from a web-based survey of 6756 Danish men aged 45-70 years.

METHOD

We used municipality-level information from registries, self-reported sociodemographic data, personality characteristics, and 5-point Likert scale evaluations of health care and communication in general practice. Comparisons were made between groups using multivariable linear regression.

RESULTS

The response rate was 28%. A large majority of participants agreed or strongly agreed that their GP treatment had been 'almost perfect', with slightly fewer responding that their GP was good at showing consideration for them. The latter item was, however, reversed, making comparisons difficult and all differences were small. Older healthcare users evaluated health care higher than did younger healthcare users; higher scores on the extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness personality dimensions generally were associated with higher evaluation scores, whereas the opposite tended to be true for responders with higher neuroticism scores. When not controlling for multiplicity, participants in rural areas tended to evaluate the explanation of medical procedures with lower scores; participants with cerebrovascular disease and those residing in higher tax income areas tended to evaluate GP care less positively in general.

CONCLUSION

Despite an overall high evaluation of GP care, evaluations may vary, including among different groups of healthcare users.