Association between perceived health status and satisfaction with quality of care: evidence from users of primary health care in Oman

Objective. Our aim was to assess the influence of perceived health status, as measured by SF-12, on the client's views of service quality. Methods. A structured interview of patients was carried out in six primary health care centres in Adh Dhahira region health authority in the Sultanate of Oman. A total of 1226 patients aged 15 and over attending the different health care services within the health centres took part in the study. The main outcome measures were patients' satisfaction with the different aspects of health care and their perceived physical and mental health status. Results. When adjusted for the relevant background factors such as age and gender, poor perceived health status has been found to predict less positive judgements of various aspects of health care quality. Poor mental health status, for example, predicts less positive judgements of aspects that are linked to the accessibility of the service and interpersonal aspects of care such as the working hours of the centre, GP's attitude and time spent with the GP (P < 0.05, <0.05 and <0.01, respectively). Poor physical health status, on the other hand, predicts less positive judgements of aspects such as cleanliness of the building, confidentiality of consultation with the GP, explanation about the visit to the antenatal clinic and standard of antenatal clinic in general (P < 0.05, <0.05, <0.05 and <0.05, respectively). Conclusion. Users' perceived health status has to be evaluated concurrently with assessing satisfaction with the quality of health care services. This would provide more valid results with regard to the patients' views on their level of satisfaction with health care quality.