The perception of health care quality by primary health care managers in Ukraine

BACKGROUND: Ukraine is reforming its health care system to improve quality of health care. Insight into how primary health care managers perceive quality is important for the ongoing reform as well as for the improvement of medical services.

METHODS: An online survey was conducted as part of the Ukrainian-Swiss project "Medical Educational Development" in April-May 2019 based on the contact list of USAID project "Health Reform Support", and additionally on the database of the National Health Service of Ukraine and other channels. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and qualitative data analysis.

RESULTS: In total, 302 health care managers took part in the study. The majority of primary health care managers perceive quality in health care as process quality. They associate quality mostly with compliance to standards. At the same time, primary health care managers prefer to assess outcome quality via a system of indicators and feedback. There appears to be a lack of consensus about health care quality. This may be due to a lack of awareness of the national strategy for better quality of health care service.

CONCLUSIONS: Our study provides new insights into primary care managers' perceptions of health care quality in Ukraine. The absence of a clear consensus about quality complicates the discussion about quality and how to measure quality in health care. This appears to be one of the obstacles to system-wide quality improvement.