Non-clinical factors and citizens’ satisfaction: A way to improve the quality of health systems

ABSTRACT

Citzens’ self-reported satisfaction is often employed to assess the quality of health services and systems and guide actions for improvement. Health providers and policymakers are increasingly interested in identifying factors that promote higher satisfaction with health systems. Using data from the Spanish Healthcare Barometer survey, this paper aims at analysing the relationship between non-clinical factors of responsiveness and overall satisfaction with the public Spanish National Health System. Specifically, the study examines whether better experiences with aspects such as doctor-patient communication, dignity, or prompt attention are relevant in improving overall satisfaction with the health system. Factors that contribute most to satisfaction are also identified. The methodology relies on probit-adapted ordinary least squares, a method that is increasingly employed in the most recent subjective well-being literature. The findings show that non-clinical factors are relevant in reporting higher overall satisfaction with the health system. Factors related to prompt attention and dignity contribute most to increasing satisfaction. As our readings suggest, this is the first study to present empirical evidence on the relevance of non-clinical factors of responsiveness in improving users’ experience with the whole Spanish health system. These results provide health policymakers with information to improve the quality of the system.

KEYWORDS:

• Quality assessment
• non-clinical quality
• patient satisfaction
• probit-adapted ordinary least squares
• health system performance
• health system responsiveness

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Agencia Estatal de Investigación: [Grant Number ECO2015-66553-R] and the Faculty of Economics and Business Sciences of the University of Granada.

Notes on contributors

Ángel Fernández-Pérez

Ángel Fernández-Pérez holds a double PhD in Economics from the University of Granada, Spain, and the University of Insubria at Varese, Italy. He is Assistant Professor in the Department of Applied Economics at the University of Granada. His main research is in the field of health economics, specifically health policy evaluation and health system performance. He is also interested in the economics of inequality.

Ángeles Sánchez

Angeles Sánchez holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Granada, Spain. She is Associate Professor in the Department of Applied Economics at the University of Granada. Her research interests focus on how public policies can contribute to increasing people’s well-being and reducing economic inequalities.