Evaluation of the privatisation of health care from the user’s point of view

The aim of the research was to determine the impact of privatisation in health care on the quality of health services. The survey is an evaluation from the point of view of users, since they are the most relevant evaluators — they are the only ones who experience health services and their experience of health care is comprehensive (from ordering, through visiting various specialists to the achievement of health services — improving health status). In order to measure the impact of privatisation on the quality of healthcare services, we carefully planned the sample of users by selecting the same number of users from the public doctor, the concessionaire and the private individual (sampling is explained in detail in the methodology). Their quality of service assessments were then compared with each other and the responses were controlled by sociodemographic variables. Of course, the questionnaire includes even more thematic sections: assessment of changes in health care, health insurance (facts, opinions and experiences of users about health insurance), aspiration of users with regard to healthcare services and user behaviour in case of dissatisfaction with the service. There are also socio-demographic characteristics of the users. The content of the questionnaire was conceived on the basis of a comprehensive study of the theory of the quality of health services. We used the dimensions of service quality from the internationally established questionnaire SERVQUAL, but due to the financial limitations of the research, we used a different scale of answers (in the above-mentioned international questionnaire, all questions are repeated twice — first as aspirations, then as an actual experience). In the study, we repeated some questions of SJM 99/2 — Health and Health: B3, B21, C16, F13, F15, and some questions from the study Communication with Pulmonary Patients (1998): B16, B19, B20, C15.