Assessing Patient Satisfaction in Bulawayo’s Healthcare System: An Ordered Probit Analysis of Public vs Private Hospitals

The evaluation of the responsiveness of healthcare services, and thus the quality of healthcare services, can be conducted by measuring the satisfaction of patients with the level of quality they receive from the health services. The study aimed at investigating the level of satisfaction, and the determining factors of satisfaction, for hospitalized patients in public and private hospitals in Bulawayo. A cross-sectional comparative study in two large public hospital United Bulawayo Hospitals and Mpilo Central Hospital including three private hospitals Mater Dei Hospital, Galen House and Corporate 24 Hospital was conducted. 200 patients were enrolled through convenience sampling. A brief and validated questionnaire was used and data was entered into STATA15 and further analysed for satisfaction levels and comparison between the five healthcare systems was studied.By using an ordered probit model regression analysis, findings showed patients in private hospitals had higher scores in all evaluated dimensions compared to patients hospitalized in public hospitals. Mean patient satisfaction score in private hospital was 29.04 ± 3.25 which was significantly higher than that of public hospitals was 24.87 ± 3.69 and private hospitals showed an overall better level of satisfaction (p < 0.01) in all aspects. In conclusion, considering the high satisfaction level of the private hospital patients in the study, it is imperative for public hospitals to enact improvement measures concerning organization and management in order to upgrade their quality of health services, in order to earn a competitive place in the country’s health services market.