A study on patient’s perception towards quality of health care services of private hospitals with reference to guntur and vijayawada

Health is an important constituent of human development. Good health is real wealth of the humans as well as society. The importance of health care in modern day society can be gauged from the fact that good health is recognized as one of the fundamental rights of an individual. The practice of public health has been dynamic in India, and has witnessed many hurdles in its attempt to affect the lives of the people of this country.

India’s constitution guarantees free healthcare for all its citizens and all government hospitals are required to provide free of cost healthcare access regardless of socioeconomic status to the patients. However, Indian public healthcare industry is a disappointment on various levels. Though we may have the best technologies and doctors, Indian public healthcare still lacks infrastructure in terms of clinics, diagnostic centers, and affordable healthcare’s for the public at public healthcare.

With the help of numerous government subsidies in the 1980, private health providers entered the market. After 2005, most of the healthcare capacity added has been in the private sector, or in partnership with the private sector. The private healthcare expands their services by providing better services to the public by providing more care on patients, and facilities like labs, diagnostic centers, and modern infrastructure.

However, the high out of pocket costs from the private health care sector has led many households to incur catastrophic health expenditure(CHE), defined as health expenditure that threatens a common people’s capacity to maintain a basic standard of living.

The purpose of this study was to know the quality of health care services of private health care sectors from the perception of the common people in the areas of GUNTUR and VIJAYAWADA,(A.P). The data for the study was collected through a questionnaire comprising different variables like reliability, responsiveness, caring etc, and provide some suggestions to improve the quality of health care and patient satisfaction from the patient perceptions on private hospital services.