The quality of primary health care for chronically ill patients: a cross-sectional study

Patients with at least one chronic disease requiring regular contact with their GP, additional tests and systematic use of medicines constitute one of the challenges for the future of primary medical care. To date, no studies have been published describing the most important factors in increasing the quality of care for the chronically ill.

To evaluate correlations between patients' characteristics and their assessments of the quality of health care and to identify the primary factors influencing the quality of care for chronically ill patients.

The sample for the current analysis included 232 chronically ill adult patients of primary care clinics in Poland. The patients' opinions regarding subjective and objective examinations, their participation in clinical decision-making processes, psychosocial factors, contact with the doctor in emergency situations and confidence in the doctor were investigated.

The strongest correlations defining the quality of care for the chronically ill were identified as the occurrence of hypertension (0.248, p < 0.001), the patient's gender (0.271, p < 0.001), the patient's level of education (0.169, p < 0.01) and the patient's age (0.155, p = 0.018). The results of the ANOVA test were statistically significant (p < 0.05) for the occurrence of myocardial infarction, hypertension, type 2 diabetes, psoriasis, multiple sclerosis, the doctor's gender, the patient's gender, age and education.

The areas that the participants gave the highest ratings to are subjective and objective examinations, kindness and willingness to help. The strongest correlations between high assessments of the quality of care provided for chronically ill patients at primary care clinics were observed in the following variables: gender, age, level of education, frequency of visits, therapy conducted by a doctor at a specialist clinic, arterial hypertension, COPD and/or myocardial infarction.