Patient experience among individuals who availed services from selected primary medical care institutions supported by the primary health care system strengthening project in Sri Lanka

In primary health care, understanding patient experience is essential for fostering patient-centered care by prioritizing needs, preferences, values and patient satisfaction. In Sri Lanka, the Ministry of Health implemented a Primary Health Care Systems Strengthening Project since 2018 to reorganize primary medical care institutions (PMCI) to deliver patient-centered care. We conducted a patient experience survey in the nine selected PMCIs supported by the project among the patients availing care during January – March 2021 to document the perceived importance and satisfaction with services by clinicians and other staff, information and cooperation and other services. A cross-sectional patient experience survey using a pilot tested questionnaire was conducted in June 2021. The questionnaire consisted of 21 items each with 5-point Likert-scale response to capture the perceived importance and satisfaction with particular aspects of service at PMCI during the latest visit. All the interviews were conducted telephonically by trained research assistants after obtaining telephonic consent. Of 1374 eligible patients, 863 (62.8%) could be contacted telephonically, of whom 848 (61.7%) consented to interview. Of the 848 patients, 40.8% were aged ≥ 60 years and 66.8% were females. More than 60% of patients perceived clinician services, services by other staff, information and cooperation as very important or of the utmost importance. The proportion of patients who reported being satisfied to a large or very large extent was > 75% for clinician services, > 73% for other staff and > 66% for information and cooperation. About 67% and 60% of patients reported being not all satisfied or satisfied to a small extent with waiting times before they were called for services and ease of receiving personal health numbers respectively. Only 12.7% of the patients reported a ‘low level of satisfaction’ with the overall services received in the PMCIs. This first patient experience survey from the PMCIs supported by the project showed a good level of satisfaction with services. Although the findings are encouraging, attention must be paid to shortening waiting times and improving the ease of registering and obtaining personal health numbers for better healthcare services.