Non-clinical factors and citizens’ satisfaction: A way to improve the quality of health systems

Abstract

Users’ self-reported satisfaction is often employed to assess the quality of health services and systems and guide actions for improvement. For this reason, health providers and policymakers are increasingly interested in identifying factors that promote people’s higher satisfaction with the health system that protects them. Using data from the Spanish Healthcare Barometer survey, this paper aims at analysing the relation between non-clinical factors and people’s overall satisfaction with the public Spanish National Health System. Specifically, we study whether a better experience with factors such as doctor-patient communication or prompt attention is relevant in improving overall satisfaction with the health system and identify which factors contribute most to satisfaction. Probit-adapted ordinary least squares, which has been increasingly employed in the most recent subjective well-being literature, is used as a methodology. The findings show that non-clinical factors are relevant in reporting higher overall satisfaction with the health system. Factors related to prompt attention and dignity contribute most to increasing overall satisfaction. These findings provide health policymakers with information about where to best allocate economic resources to improve the quality of the health system.