Publication:

A community based cross-sectional study on the health system responsiveness in the urban field practicing area of tertiary health care centre, Hyderabad

Background According to WHO, responsiveness is an important goal of the health system, in addition to the two predominant goals of improving health and fairness of financing. Responsiveness includes non-medical aspects of health care. As the progress to universal health coverage is gaining pace, the present study has attempted to study the domains of responsiveness in the government and private health services and health care providers.

Methods A community based cross-sectional study for a period of 3 months in the households of the urban field practising area. Sampling technique was simple random sampling. Assuming the prevalence of 50% and allowable error of 5%, 400 households were surveyed. KISH table method was used at household level. Study tool was World Health Survey responsiveness module questionnaire for the eight responsiveness domains-prompt attention, dignity, communication, autonomy, confidentiality, choice, quality of basic facilities and social support (for inpatients).

Results The mean age (yrs) of the study subjects is 46.078±13.998. 68.25% (273) were males.31.75% (127) were females. 46.25% (185) were using government services and 53.75% (215) were using private services. The mean waiting time (min) in the public health facilities was 135.2±111.2 which was more than private facilities, 62.4±40.8.

Conclusions All the responsiveness domains (except confidentiality) were found to be positively associated (p<0.05) with the government health services. Proportion of people rating the responsiveness domains from most important to the least important showed prompt attention (52%) and dignity (30%) as the most important domains.