The Imbalance between Patient Needs and the Limited Competence of Top-Level Health Providers in Urban China: An Empirical Study Based on a 2008 National Household Survey

The Chinese community patient’s life satisfaction, assessment of community medical service, and trust in community health delivery system

“…As the result, the participation of CHC in China’s health care market slightly alleviated the problem “medical service was expensive and difficult to access” [2], but the community patient was still not very satisfied with community medical service [4,7]. For example, in the 2008 national urban resident household survey, it was suggested that the quality of the process of delivering treatment service, the quality of doctor-patient communication, the quality of medical facility, and the quality of hospital environment in CHC should be further improved, and CHC should continue strengthening its competitive advantages (involving shorter waiting time for medical service and lower medical cost, compared with hospitals in the three-level public hospital system, here the definition of medical cost was the actual cost of providing both goods and services related to the delivery of medical care) to effectively promote the community patient’s life satisfaction [4,5]. …”

“…One major part of the attribute-level responses of life satisfaction was composed of the community patient’s assessments of various major aspects of community medical service, and the reason for this was that the community patient’s life satisfaction could be seen as a comprehensive response that resulted from both pre-treatment expectation and post-treatment cognitive and affective evaluation of community medical service [14-22]. On the basis of previous studies, the major aspects of community medical service consisted of the quality of medical treatment process, the quality of doctor-patient communication, the length of waiting time for medical service, the quantity and quality of medical facility, the quality of hospital environment, and the medical cost [4,5,23-27]. Another major part of the attribute-level responses of life satisfaction was composed of various major aspects of the community patient’s trust in community health delivery system, because when the community patient formed the stable trust in community health delivery system as a response to the unbalanced relationship between community patient and community doctor/CHC, the community patient’s trust in community health delivery system influenced attitude towards, cognition on, and response mode with the effectiveness of community medical service to a large extent [28-34].…”

“…Another major part of the attribute-level responses of life satisfaction was composed of various major aspects of the community patient’s trust in community health delivery system, because when the community patient formed the stable trust in community health delivery system as a response to the unbalanced relationship between community patient and community doctor/CHC, the community patient’s trust in community health delivery system influenced attitude towards, cognition on, and response mode with the effectiveness of community medical service to a large extent [28-34]. In literature, the most important aspects of the community patient’s trust in community health delivery system consisted of trust in medical institution, trust in doctor, trust in prescription, and trust in recommended medical examination [4,5,23,25,35]. Other parts of the attribute-level responses of life satisfaction were composed of the community patient’s certain personal characteristics, for example, the community patient’s demographic characteristics, socioeconomic characteristics, medical insurance status, health status, and disease status were all proved to be the possible influencing factors for life satisfaction [4,5].…”

The influences of patient's satisfaction with medical service delivery, assessment of medical service, and trust in health delivery system on patient's life satisfaction in China

“…In China’s health delivery system, patient’s medical experiences in different kinds of hospitals were significantly different, and then effective ways to promote patient’s life satisfaction in different kinds of hospitals were also different, but as researchers have already pointed out, there lacked the holistic and systematic approaches to promote patient’s life satisfaction in various kinds of hospitals [1,2,4]. …”

The influences of patient's trust in medical service and attitude towards health policy on patient's overall satisfaction with medical service and sub satisfaction in China

“…And evidence from interview in China showed that among patients who received the same medical service, patients who thought highly (lowly) of health policy in recent years usually had higher (lower) satisfaction with medical service in current medical experience [18]. …”