Evaluation of services quality provided by primary public and private health care institutions in respect of the patients in Kaunas and assesment of factors determining the choice of health care institution

Objective. To evaluate and compare patients attitude to health care services quality in private and public primary health care institutions and to assess factors that determine the choice of health care institution. Research method. The research was done during the year of 2017 by anonymous questionnaire 374 randomly selected patients over the age of 18 (265 women and 109 men) were questioned, who applied to family doctor. The selected patients for the research were divided into two groups based on a health care institution: patients who attend public (194 individuals) and private (182 individuals) primary health care centres. Patients attitude to health care organization and quality, technical quality, external effectiveness, choice of certain primary health care institution, its determinational factors, replacement motives were analyzed and compared. The data analysis was performed using a statistical program package (SPSS Version 24.0 for Windows). The differences between the groups were evaluated using χ2 test. Mann – Whitney U test was used for comparisons within groups. The disparity is considered statistically significant, when p<0.05. Results. Organizational quality factors of services in public and private health care institutions were evaluated positive (over 84%). Organization and quality, technical service quality and external effectiveness were evaluated better in private primary health care institutions (4.48, 4.44 and 4.38 points), than public (3.93, 3.84 and 3.74 points, p