Attitudes of Health Professionals towards Integrated Health Campuses: A Second-Order Confirmatory Factor Analysis

Abstract

City hospitals (integrated health campuses) are a remarkable health policy action that has recently been implemented to meet the increasing public health needs. Health care professionals work in a collaborative atmosphere and provide interprofessional care on health campuses. This study is designed to explore the confirmatory factor structure of the Initial Attitudes towards Integrated Health Care (ATIHC) scale in Turkish health professionals, which was used to evaluate the attitudes of health professionals, consisting of senior managers and specialist physicians, towards city hospitals. Data were gathered from 196 health professionals, including senior managers and specialist physicians, working in a city hospital located in the rural part of the country. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to analyze the data through the first-order and second-order stages. The performance of the second-order CFA model is meaningful ( p < 0.00001 ) and acceptable ( X 2 /df = 1663/430 = 3.8; RMSEA = 0.12), and the goodness-of-fit indices are good (CFI = 0.92; NFI = 0.89; IFI = 0.92). The ATIHC scale, which consists of four latent variables under the second-order latent “attitudes” variable, better represents the sample, and health care quality and efficiency (β = 1.03, p < 0.01 ) and coordination of care components (β = 1.02, p < 0.01 ) are the prominent factors in explaining the attitudes of health professionals towards city hospitals. The Turkish version of ATIHC is a reliable and valid instrument for measuring the attitudes of health professionals towards city hospitals.