An economic analysis of service quality and patient satisfaction of greek healthcare system
Μια οικονομική ανάλυση της ποιότητας υπηρεσιών και ικανοποίησης ασθενών στο ελληνικό σύστημα υγείας
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Subject
Υγειονομική πολιτική -- Ελλάδα ; Δημόσια υγεία -- Ελλάδα ; Healthcare -- Greece -- Quality control ; Healthcare systemKeywords
Ικανοποίηση ασθενών ; Patient care ; Patient satisfactionAbstract
Quality in healthcare has been studied largely from the clinical perspective, excluding the
patient’s perception of service quality. Patient satisfaction is a topic that is important both to
medical (health) providers, the patients (consumers) and other third-party stakeholders in the
medical care industry. Patients’ opinions are taken as part of producing a quality
management, and the users’ satisfaction is taken to determine the service quality dimension.
This dissertation aims to evaluate the quality of the Health System through the revealed
preferences of its users. Among other factors, we take into account various socioeconomic
factors and demographic parameters and derive relevant policy implications.
Chapter 1 introduces the topic of patient’s satisfaction, relates it with the quality of healthcare
service. The literature review reveals its importance, the factors related to it and previous
ways to quantify it and measure it. The research motivation factors along with the research
problems and questions are also presented.
Chapter 2 studies whether the European patients are satisfied with their country’s healthcare
system quality. The results demonstrate that more than half of the European patients are in
general satisfied with their healthcare system. Public health expenditures as a percentage of
GDP, population aging, as well as number of doctors and number of nurses increase patient
satisfaction.
Chapter 3 examines the deviation documented between patients’ preferences with respect to
healthcare resources allocation and actual public spending on health. There is a small
deviation between citizens’ preferences with respect to health resources allocation and actual
public health spending, while income, number of family members and residence seem to
greatly shape these preferences.
Chapter 4 explores ehealth literacy as the ability in searching, analyzing, processing and
comprehending information from the Internet in order to address or solve health related issues
and reveals that the ehealth literacy level of Greek citizens is fair. The degree of ehealth
literacy depends positively on education level and physical exercise, and negatively on the
age of the participant.
Chapter 5 examines the case study of Konstantopouleio General Hospital, providing evidence
for the relationship between patient’s satisfaction level and received services. The results
demonstrate the important role of the attention received by the medical staff, nursing staff,
and hospital’s environment for both groups of in- and out-patients, while among the
demographic factors, the perceived health status and age also play a significant role for the inpatients’
satisfaction. The latter remains significant for out-patients, along with education and
insurance.
Overall, patient satisfaction is related to healthcare outcomes, but it is also considered to be a
tool for disseminating social inequalities; therefore, lightening how several factors associate
with patients’ preferences, and in consequence with patient satisfaction, taking into
consideration specific characteristics of users, is extremely important. This research
contributes to important discussions in the literature, for instance, the encouragement of
patients’ participation by introducing policies of empowerment the knowledge dissemination
along with the democratization of the decision making process.
Department
Σχολή Οικονομικών, Επιχειρηματικών και Διεθνών Σπουδών. Τμήμα Οικονομικής ΕπιστήμηςNumber of pages
166Language
EnglishCollections
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Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Διεθνές