Patients’ Perceptions And Expectations Toward Quality Of Health Service And Associated Factors Among Patients Admitted To Public Hospitals Of Ambo Town, Oromia, Ethiopia

Abstract

Background:-Despite efforts to improve the overall quality of public hospitals, the public's opinion of poor quality appears to have remained unaltered. Improving the quality of health care service offered in public health institutions in developing nations is a critical prerequisite for boosting population health care consumption and sustainability. Patients and their perceptions are the most important evaluators in health-care quality assessments. Recently increases in health-care coverage, the variable and unreliable quality of care is still evident in Ethiopia Objective: -The aimed of this study assess patient’s perceptions and expectations on quality of health service and associated factors among patients admitted to public hospitals of Ambo town 2021. Methods: - Facility based cross sectional study design was conducted among 422 study participants in Ambo town of two public hospitals from September 1 to 30, 2021. The study participants were selected by using systematic sampling technique. Pretested structured interviewers assisted questionnaire were used to collect data. Data were collected by trained nurses and entered into Epi data version 3.1; exported to SPSS version 23 analyzed. Descriptive analysis was computed using the respondent information and the scores for the 22 items of the service quality. All independent variables with p-value < 0.25 in the bi- variable logistic regression analysis were entered into multivariable logistic regression analysis. An adjusted odds ratio with a 95% CI and a p-value of <0.05 was used to declared the statistical significant. Results:- From the total of 422 samples, 416 study participants responded to the study by making the response rate of 98.6%. The average mean (± SD) length of patients stay in the hospitals was 10.47 days (SD ± 7.67). The mean scores of expectations were ranged between 3.85 to 4.14 and the perceptions ranged from 2.56 to 3.80. The total means score of patients’ expectation and perception was 4.01, and 2.98 respectively. Both the highest expectation and perception score were related to the tangible dimension. The lowest expectation and perception related to the tangibles and empathy dimension respectively. The highest gap of the quality relates to the empathy dimension (gap mean score = -1.4 and the overall service quality dimension gap score was -1.03 and poor perceived quality was 51.2%.The result of the study showed that education status (AOR = 0.29, 95% CI: 0.15, 0.56) and duration the XIII patient stay in the hospitals (AOR = 0.33, 95% CI: 0.191, 0.554) were the variables that significantly associated with perceived quality of health services. Conclusion and Recommendation: - In this study the perceived quality of health service was failing to meet the expectation of the patients visiting the selected public hospitals. Educational status and duration the patient stay in the hospitals were found to be the significant associated with perceived quality of health services. The present study shows that some service dimensions of patients require being promoted and health institutio