Perceived quality of care among households ever enrolled in a community-based health insurance scheme in two districts of northeast Ethiopia: a multilevel analysis (Updated June 7, 2022): Health and Medicine

2022 JUN 22 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- According to news reporting based on a preprint abstract, our journalists obtained the following quote sourced from medrxiv.org:

“Objectives: The purpose of this study was to examine how clients perceived about the quality of health care they received and to identify associated factors at the individual and facility-level. Design: A community-based, cross-sectional study Setting: Health centers in two districts Participants: 1081 rural households who had ever been enrolled in a community-based health insurance and had visited a health center at least once in the previous 12 months, as well as 194 health care providers working in 12 health centers. Outcome measures: The outcome variable of interest was the perceived quality of care, which was measured using a 17-item scale. Respondents were asked to rate the degree to which they agreed on 5-point response items relating to their experiences with health care in the outpatient departments of nearby health centers.

“A multilevel linear regression analysis was used to identify predictors of perceived quality of care. Results: The mean perceived quality of care was 70.28 (SD=8.39). Five dimensions of perceived quality of care were extracted from the factor analysis, with the patient-provider communication dimension having the highest mean score (M=77.84, SD=10.12), and information provision having the lowest (M=64.67, SD=13.87). Wealth status, current insurance status, perceived health status, presence of chronic illness, time to a recent health center visit, work experience of health care providers and patient volume were the factors significantly associated with perceived quality of care. An interaction term between patient volume and staff job satisfaction also showed significant association.

“Conclusions: Much work remains to improve the quality of care, especially on information provision and access to care quality dimensions.

“A range of individual and cluster-level characteristics influence the perceived quality of care. For a better quality of care, it is vital to optimize the patient-provider ratio, and enhance staff job satisfaction.”

This preprint has not been peer-reviewed.

For more information on this research see: http://medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.10.18.21265144v2

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