Perceived quality of care of primary health care services in Burkina Faso

TLDR

Patient perspectives are increasingly recognized as essential for shaping health policy, and understanding perceptions of primary care quality is key to boosting service utilization. The study aims to guide policymakers in prioritizing patient preferences to enhance primary health care quality and utilization. Researchers administered a 20‑item scale covering personnel conduct, resource adequacy, delivery, and accessibility to 1,081 users across 11 rural health centers in Nouna, Burkina Faso. Results revealed low ratings for drug availability, facility resources, and financial accessibility, with the urban hospital performing worse than rural centers; health system characteristics accounted for 29 % of response variation, highlighting drug availability and financial access as top policy priorities.

Abstract

Patients' views are being given more and more importance in policy-making. Understanding populations' perceptions of quality of care is critical to developing measures to increase the utilization of primary health care services.Documentation of user's opinion on the quality of care of primary health care services.A 20-item scale, including four sub-scales related to health personnel practices and conduct, adequacy of resources and services, health care delivery, and financial and physical accessibility, was administered to 1081 users of 11 health care centres in the health district of Nouna, in rural Burkina Faso.The respondents were relatively positive on items related to health personnel practices and conduct and to health care delivery, but less so on items related to adequacy of resources and services and to financial and physical accessibility. In particular, the availability of drugs for all diseases on the spot, the adequacy of rooms and equipment in the facilities, the costs of care and the access to credit were valued poorly. Overall, the urban hospital was rated poorer than the average rural health care centre. Analysis of variance showed that, overall, health system characteristics explain 29% of all variation of the responses.Improving drug availability and financial accessibility to health services have been identified as the two main priorities for health policy action. Policy-makers should respect these patient preferences to deliver effective improvement of the quality of care as a potential means to increase utilization of health care.