Experience and Satisfaction of the Elderly with Healthcare Services in Selected Primary Healthcare Centres in Lagos
), Omotade MO(2), Oluwole EO(3), Bakre AT(4), Abiola AO(5), Makinde AV(6),
(1) Department of Community Health and Primary Care, College of Medicine, University of Lagos, Lagos, Nigeria.
(2) Department of Community Health and Primary Care, College of Medicine, University of Lagos, Lagos, Nigeria.
(3) Department of Community Health and Primary Care, College of Medicine, University of Lagos, Lagos, Nigeria.
(4) Faculty of Education, Health and Wellbeing, University of Wolverhampton, Wolverhampton, WV1 1DT, UK
(5) Department of Community Health and Primary Care, College of Medicine, University of Lagos, Lagos, Nigeria.
(6) Department of Social Sciences, Rufus Giwa Polythechnic, Owo, Ondo State.
Corresponding Author
Abstract
Background: The proportion of the aging population is rapidly increasing and is a serious cause for concern in developing countries. Unmet healthcare need of the elderly increases the severity of illness and mortality. Patient satisfaction with healthcare services depends on people’s expectations in addition to their experiences. The only way to meet up with clients’ demand and retain them is by constant measurement of their experiences.
Objective: To determine the experience and satisfaction with healthcare services among the elderly in selected Primary Healthcare (PHC) centres in Lagos.
Methods: A cross sectional study was carried out on 207 elderly patients attending selected PHC centres in Lagos State from June 2018 to August 2018. A multistage simple random sampling technique was used to select respondents and data was collected with the aid of modified SERVQUAL questionnaires to determine the expectation and perception of the quality of service received by the elderly patients at the PHC centres and the overall level of satisfaction with healthcare services provided by the PHC centres based on their willingness to come back and their recommendations to family/friends. This measured both the expectation before service and perception of the quality of care received with a 5-point Likert scale; strongly agree, agree, uncertain, disagree and strongly disagree, with strongly agree being scored as 5 being highest and strongly disagree 1. The average was calculated for each dimension of service. The gap score was calculated by subtracting the expectation score (E) from the perception (P) score for each component of the dimension of quality. The obtained data was analysed with SPSS version 20 software.
Results: The service quality gap scores were negative across all the five domains employed in the study. The widest gap occurred in responsiveness and tangibility with -1.1 respectively, followed by reliability and empathy (–1.0) and assurance (–0.8). There was statistically significant difference between the expectations and perception in the five dimensions of service quality employed (p<0.05). A proportion of 55.6% of the respondents perceived service quality as high while 93% would like to come back and 93.7% would be willing to recommend health services to family and friends.
Conclusion: The expectation of the respondents was higher than their perception thereby giving a negative SERVQUAL outcome. However, majority of the respondents still indicated that they were satisfied with the quality of care received despite not meeting their expectation.
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