Abstract
Abstract Introduction In 2017, an amendment to the Act on Healthcare Services Financed from Public Funds of 23 March 2017 introduced a system of basic hospital provision of healthcare services, the so-called ‘hospital network’. Aims The main aim of the study was to find out the impact of organisational and legal changes to the healthcare system in Poland in the form of an amendment to the Act on Healthcare Services Financed from Public Funds of 23 March 2017 on patient satisfaction with selected elements of healthcare. Material and methods The study was conducted in two stages: before and after the introduction of the amendment. The study covered 847 patients in stage I and 723 patients in stage II in several randomly selected wards of the Regional Multi-Specialist Center for Oncology and Traumatology of the Nicolaus Copernicus Memorial Hospital in Lodz. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used in the data analysis. Results The majority of the surveyed patients had no opinion on the impact of the amended Act on the quality of provided services. Similar results were obtained when analysing the patients’ assessment of reduction of queues to a specialist doctor. A large group of respondents claimed that the amendment to the Act would not reduce queues for hospital treatment. While assessing the current healthcare system, both before and after the amendment to the Act, patients most often gave a rating of 4 (45.2% and 47.2%), while about one third of patients gave a rating of 3 (30.8% and 33.7%). Patients gave the highest rating for the performance of doctors as well as of nursing and auxiliary staff. Conclusions Introduction of the amendment to the Act on Healthcare Services Financed from Public Funds has not affected the overall level of patient satisfaction with healthcare.
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