Healthcare seeking behavior among patients visiting public primary and secondary healthcare facilities in an urban Indian district: A cross-sectional quantitative analysis.

Autor:	Fatma N; Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, New Delhi, India., Ramamohan V; Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, New Delhi, India.
Jazyk:	angličtina
Zdroj:	PLOS global public health [PLOS Glob Public Health] 2023 Sep 05; Vol. 3 (9), pp. e0001101. Date of Electronic Publication: 2023 Sep 05 (Print Publication: 2023).
DOI:	10.1371/journal.pgph.0001101
Abstrakt:	In this work, we examined healthcare seeking behavior (HSB) of patients visiting public healthcare facilities in an urban context. We conducted a cross-sectional survey across twenty-two primary and secondary public healthcare facilities in the South-west Delhi district in India. The quantitative survey was designed to ascertain from patients at these facilities their HSB-i.e., on what basis patients decide the type of healthcare facility to visit, or which type of medical practitioner to consult. Based on responses from four hundred and forty-nine participants, we observed that factors such as wait time, prior experience with care providers, distance from the facility, and also socioeconomic and demographic factors such as annual income, educational qualification, and gender significantly influenced preferences of patients in choosing healthcare facilities. We used binomial and multinomial logistic regression to determine associations between HSB and socioeconomic and demographic attributes of patients at a 0.05 level of significance. Our statistical analyses revealed that patients in the lower income group preferred to seek treatment from public healthcare facilities (OR = 3.51, 95% CI = (1.65, 7.46)) irrespective of the perceived severity of their illness, while patients in the higher income group favored directly consulting specialized doctors (OR = 2.71, 95% CI = (1.34, 5.51)). Other factors such as having more than two children increased the probability of seeking care from public facilities. This work contributes to the literature by: (a) providing quantitative evidence regarding overall patient HSB, especially at primary and secondary public healthcare facilities, regardless of their presenting illness, (b) eliciting information regarding the pathways followed by patients visiting these facilities while seeking care, and (c) providing operational information regarding the surveyed facilities to facilitate characterizing their utilization. This work can inform policy designed to improve the utilization and quality of care at public primary and secondary healthcare facilities in India. Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. (Copyright: © 2023 Fatma, Ramamohan. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)
Databáze:	MEDLINE
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