Assessment of client′s perception in terms of satisfaction and service utilization in the central government health scheme dispensary at Kolkata

Abstract

All healthcare providers and programmes in our country have overwhelming emphasis on quantitative aspect of service delivered, which means that, in a quest to chase runaway targets, we neglect the concept of quality of care, which is also a right of clients.(1) Healthcare providers and programmes worldwide have increasingly recognized that the quality of care they provide determines their overall success in attracting the clients and meeting their needs, and the quality improvement initiative has been started because poor quality is costly - to clients, to programmes and to the society overall. People's perception about quality of care often determines whether they seek and continue to use services.(2) Being intangible in nature, the perception directly affects the quality rating in service. So, there are attempts to scale and measure this perception. OPD is the window to any health system and OPD care indicates the quality care of hospital reflected by patient's perception in terms of satisfaction to the services they are provided. Scarcity of information on this aspect of health care inspired the authors to carry out the present study at the Central Government Health Scheme (CGHS) Dispensaries, Kolkata, with a view to (1) assess the client's satisfaction about structures and processes running in CGHS and (2) know desired level of services as perceived by the patients.