Pirminės sveikatos priežiūros reforma: gyventojų požiūris į gydytojų paslaugas

ENOne of the main objectives of the Lithuanian primary health care reform is the establishment of general practice. The aim of the sociological survey presented in this paper was to find out how Kaunas inhabitants evaluate medical services delivered by general practitioners. User perspective is important source of knowledge for health care authorities in evaluating the process of reform. However, it is nonetheless important to give community a possibility to express its opinion about the health care and thus to take part in the health related decision making at the local level. There are some problems that require more thorough consideration on the part of the health care authorities, the general practitioners themselves and all other parties involved in the reorganization at the primary health care level. The general practice is already functioning, however, it still lacks an integrative, personal, holistic, cooperative approach to health care. More attention should be paid towards the question of accessibility of the general practitioner (GP). Medical norm that defines duties of a general practitioner states that a GP on his or her patient's request should provide medical consultation by phone. The survey, however, showed that in most cases this is still not being done. 66,1 % of the respondents can't reach their doctor after his/her working hours. This is the reason why people still tend to call ambulance service instead of a GP.However, according to the primary health care reform project, the ambulance service should deal only with the most emergent cases, leaving for the GP all other responsibility for the patient. There is also a question whether general practitioners are qualified enough to diagnose and to treat all the diseases specified by the medical norm. This survey showed that GP's still tend to cure diseases, which were previously treated by therapeutists. However, the problem needs a more thorough investigation to be evaluated properly.