Abstract
Health has a significant influence on the quality of life of a society. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many countries to implement restrictive measures to prevent its wider spread, including, inter alia, the introduction of remote healthcare in the form of teleconsultations. Therefore, there is the question of how such a change affects the quality of treatment and the primary healthcare of patients during the COVID-19 pandemic. The article aims to examine patient satisfaction with the access to primary healthcare and the effectiveness of treatment in a condition of remote medical care caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. We also analyse the impact of access to primary healthcare on the treatment effectiveness. Patient satisfaction was measured using a questionnaire assessing the quality of primary medical care. Of the 36 items studied, seven were related to the accessibility dimension and four were related to the treatment effectiveness dimension. Our results suggest that the treatment effectiveness and the access to primary healthcare services during the COVID-19 pandemic through telemedicine are quite highly rated by patients. Hence, further implementation of telemedicine in primary healthcare should improve the quality of lives of the wide society. We have also identified the access to primary healthcare has a considerable impact on the treatment effectiveness. Therefore, we recommend increasing the contact between patients and GPs via telemedicine under lockdown conditions.
Highlights
Quality of life (QOL) can be defined as an individual’s perception of his or her life status in terms of the cultural systems and values of life, and concerning personal goals, expectations, standards, and concerns [1]
The analysis featured the use of descriptive statistics, the Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and the Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) for the development of the relationship between accessibility and effectiveness of telephone consultations
The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the provision of healthcare services, resulting in a considerable deterioration in patients’ overall health, especially those with chronic diseases
Summary
Quality of life (QOL) can be defined as an individual’s perception of his or her life status in terms of the cultural systems and values of life, and concerning personal goals, expectations, standards, and concerns [1]. Understanding QOL is important for improving symptom relief, care and rehabilitation of patients. QOL is used for identifying the range of problems that can affect patients. This kind of information can be communicated to future patients to help them anticipate and understand the consequences of their illness and its treatment. QOL is important for medical decision-making because it is a predictor of treatment success and is useful in diagnostics [2]. The studies carried out so far show that medical care significantly contributes to the improvement of patients’ QOL [3,4]
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