[Health care quality perceived by the patients in an urban health centre in A Coruña]

Objective: The aim of this study is to explore the reliability and validity of the adapted questionnaire SERVPERF in primary care and to obtain a measure of perceived quality from the patient point of view in an urban health centre.

Method: A cross-sectional descriptive study.

Participants: One in five of all the patients who visited the health centre during one week in March 2010 were systematically selected until completing the required sample size.

Main measurements: Personal data were collected (age, sex, nationality, marital status, level of studies, working status and their own perception on their health status). To measure the perceived quality the adapted questionnaire SERVPERF was used, with 22 items measured using a Likert scale (1-7), to which was added three open questions.

Results: Out of a total of 132 patients, 67% of those who completed the questionnaire were women. All the interscale correlations were positive and significant. The overall statistical value for Cronbach́s-α was equal to 0.90 (95% CI: 0.87-0.93), and in all domains this value ranged from 0.71 to 0.90. The factor analysis identified 5 factors that explained 69.8% of the total variance. Of the studied items, the "Individualized follow up of each patient by the doctor", with an average of 6.66 ± 0.79 (95% CI: 6.53-6.79), was the best valued.

Conclusions: The questionnaire (adapted SERVPERF) is reliable and valid for measuring perceived quality in primary care, and patients felt that the service offered is of good quality.