Discrepancies between what patients’ find important and their actual experiences

Abstract

Background: Comparisons between what patients find important and their actual experiences with primary care provides insight in the responsiveness of a country’s primary care system. These insights show where doctors could take measures to match patients’ needs. Methods: Data collected through the QUALICOPC study in the Patients’ Experiences and Values questionnaires will be statistically analysed through: descriptive statistics, multilevel analyses to compare the patient experiences between countries and tests to compare between the patients experiences and what they find important (e.g. the spearman rank order correlation test). Results: Several items related to doctor patient communication, continuity of care, accessibility, patient involvement, comprehensiveness of care and overall quality have been analysed. Preliminary results indicate that in general patients value aspects related to communication with their doctor most important. Their GP’s involvement in their personal situation and psychosocial problems is seen as less important, but this varies considerably between countries. When looking at actual experiences, GPs seem to score relatively well on communication aspects. However, differences can be found between countries, indicating room for improvement in this area. Conclusions: Based on our findings an overview will be provided on discrepancies between patients’ values and experiences in the included countries. The audience will be invited to discuss on what is behind these discrepancies. E.g.: how will differences in GPs behaviour influence these differences? Main messages: A lot of variance between countries can be found in the discrepancies between what patients find important and what they experience.