A COMPARISON OF PUBLIC AND PRIVATE HOSPITALS: A QUALITATIVE STUDY AND REVIEW OF SERVICES AND ITS EFFECT ON PATIENT SATISFACTION

A number of patients visit the public and private sectors each day. There are numerous factors that effect the patient’s choice of visiting a hospital which lead to certain perception among patients and effect the satisfaction of patients to the healthcare services provided at the hospital. The study involves analysing 5 parameters of patient satisfaction, cost consideration, educational status of a physician, waiting area time and quality of services at one public and two private hospitals in Lahore. The results were analysed using SPSS version 22.0. The results have unanimously favoured the quality of services provided at the private setup compared to the public setup and enhanced level of satisfaction of patients visiting the private set up. Public hospitals are open to all where all kinds of patients can visit. The number of patients visiting public hospitals are also higher compared to the private hospitals. However due to an under funded system of public hospitals there is an observation of mismanagement of patients in the public hospitals. While in the private hospitals there is an easy flow of services, easy accessibility, more reliability of services, rapid reception, less waiting area time and more time for consultation that leads to increasingly satisfied patients in the private hospitals as compared to the public hospitals where all these parameters need deliberation or need attention for improvement. Except for the cost consideration which were found moderately higher than public hospitals all other aspects were in favour of private setup. There is thus a requirement to improve the services availability in the public hospitals and make the private hospitals cost effective for a larger population of patients visiting healthcare departments so that the mass of population visiting the public sectors can be diverted to private hospitals for treatment at fairly reasonable costs. Keywords: public, private, hospita