Patient Satisfaction at Public Health Care Centres

Satisfaction of patients has always been a yardstick to measure the services available or services being provided at the health care centres. But it becomes difficult to access patient satisfaction as one cannot consider only clinical facilities even non clinical facilities provided/available at the centre need to be considered. Satisfaction has been defined as a consumer's emotional feeling about a specific consumption experience (1, 2). It is perceived that a service or product themselves or their features provide a pleasurable level of consumption related fulfilment. The patient clearly is the core beneficiary of any good health care system, and becomes the man focus of the health care delivery system. The perceptions of the patients or clients of the health care system seem to have been highly ignored by the health care managers mostly in the developing countries. Satisfaction of the patients depends not only clinical factors but also on non-clinical factors which comes into contact in the clinical process. These non-clinical factors mainly consist of the basic amenities that exist if the health care centres such as, hospital services, food made available beds etc.