RESUMO
BACKGROUND: Patient experience is considered an important tool to measure the quality of healthcare, which is a treatment efficiency and effectiveness outcome. This study aims to measure the level of quality provided by three hospitals in Alipurduar District, India with a focus on the patient satisfaction and to identify inequality of service received by patients from different backgrounds. METHODS: By using stratified random sampling technique and seven points Likert scale, the required primary data were collected from the patients of these hospitals with a selected sample size of 300 patients. Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) was used in grouping the items and Multiple Linear Regression, ANOVA, and T-test were used for analysing the data. RESULTS: The services delivered in these hospitals moderately (4.660 ± .787) satisfy the patients, showing an average quality of healthcare. Therefore, patients from better income groups tend to have paid caregivers to provide better care. Moreover, quality of healthcare has a significant impact (R2 = .770) on patient satisfaction which varied between respondent groups, indicating inequality in the services delivered. CONCLUSIONS: In these Govt. hospitals where every patient has an equal right to receive quality care, due to the inequality in the patients' socio-economic background, this is still not possible. Hospital authorities should improve the quality of healthcare by identifying deficiencies and by taking feedback from patients.
