The The Health Care Quality through the Patient’s Eyes: An Independent Online Survey Results. Part I

Abstract

Assessment of the medical care quality cannot be seen as a technical function of medical organizations and regulatory bodies of state power, since it is relevant to everyone who seeks medical assistance. Nevertheless, today patients practically do not have the opportunity to speak about the quality of services and be heard. Patient evaluations are considered subjective, non-expert, and unsuitable for quality assessment because patients do not have a medical background. The existing methods of identifying opinions are limited to personal appeals and surveys about the service parameters of health care. Assessments collected in this manner usually take the form of one-way messages, when information leaves through closed departmental channels, and its further application is unknown. In the best case, the patient manages to solve a private problem, but his/her opinion does not change anything systemically.

This approach is fundamentally at odds with current trends in the development of high-quality health care systems, which not only prioritize the trust of their clients, but emphasize the ability of the system to change in response to people’s needs. Patients are willing and able to objectively evaluate the quality of care, its effectiveness, safety, and other parameters that they consider important. Based on this, as a part of the online forum of In Motion patient support group, the author of this study developed a survey on the health care quality in the form in which patients would like to see it. This article presents the first part of the study results, which provides a theoretical framework for the possibility of patients' participation in the health care quality evaluation. The second part of the article will analyze the results of the quality care survey developed and implemented by patients.

Acknowledgments. I’m grateful to all patients and their families who took part in the survey and related discussions. I would like to express my deep gratitude to the In Motion patient support group moderator Rezeda Idrisova, for her help with the survey development and distribution, as well as for useful suggestions for data analysis. I also want to thank the patient support groups’ administrators, who helped with the survey reposts and promoting tips, especially the Patient Admins Club participants.