How the COVID-19 Pandemic Affected the Accessibility and Quality of Health Services in Poland

Magdalena Tuczyńska,Arkadiusz Nowak,Maja Matthews-Kozanecka,Ewa Baum

doi:10.2478/slgr-2021-0032

Abstract

Abstract The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic had an impact on the global economy, including the provision of health services, with medical facilities and patients cancelling or postponing medical appointments. An alternative to in-person appointments was through the available forms of telemedicine. Scientific reports around the world have suggested that the accessibility and quality of health services declined. The aim of this study was to investigate the accessibility and quality of health services in Poland and to verify whether there were differences between men and women in this respect. The study was based on the authors’ own survey questionnaire filled in by 265 respondents, including 181 women, 82 men, and 2 persons without a defined gender. The study revealed that during the COVID-19 pandemic, the accessibility and quality of health services declined. Additionally, women were more likely to use general and specialist health services than men, but a comparison of changes in the assessment of accessibility and quality of services by gender revealed no differences in the assessment of accessibility and quality.

Highlights

Accessibility of health services is a multi-dimensional term that refers to the opportunity to obtain health care when it is wanted or needed
Conducted using the authors’ own survey questionnaire prepared in Polish, i.e. the native language of the respondents. It contained the following questions: ‘Did you use medical services during the COVID-19 pandemic, and if so, was it state-funded/self-funded/primary health care?’; ‘Did you have any specialist appointments during the COVID-19 pandemic, and if so, what were they?’; ‘How do you assess the accessibility to health services before and during the COVID-19 pandemic?’, and ‘How would you rate the quality of health services before and during the COVID-19 pandemic?’
The other cases, i.e. gender in relation to the use state-funded health services (p = 0.3404) and gender in relation to the use of primary care (p = 0.3932), were found statistically insignificant. When asked whether they had any specialist appointments during the COVID-19, 177 (67.04%) respondents answered ‘yes’

Summary

Introduction

Accessibility of health services is a multi-dimensional term that refers to the opportunity to obtain health care when it is wanted or needed. The traditional indicators for measuring the accessibility of health services are the number of doctors or beds per capita. Geographic impedance or the number of people who may need the services are important factors as are patients’ opinions, expressed in questionnaires, on the quality of and accessibility of health ser-. Knowledge of the mechanisms of assessment of patients’ satisfaction helps to improve medical facilities. Factors such as waiting time, information reliability, or attention received by patients affect the assessment of the quality of health services. The complexity of measuring patient assessment is related to the moment of measurement, the type of services, or the context (Druica et al, 2019)

Objectives

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion