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Staff Reporter

PALMA
EIGHT out of 10 patients consider that the attention they received in 2006 in Primary Health Care Centres in the Balearics was good or very good.
This is according to the Spanish Ministry for Health and Consumer Affairs' Health Barometer for 2006, which collected opinions from users of the public health system.

In accordance with this survey, some 26.2 percent of users said the attention they received was very good, while 61.5 percent said it was good.
Some 10.8 percent said that they thought the attention they received was normal and 0.8 percent said they thought it was bad.
This survey, which collected the opinions of 231 people on the islands, reflects that 29.2 percent of users think they received better or much better attention than they expected, although 67.7 percent thought that it was more or less what they expected and 1.5 percent said that it was worse than they expected.

The things in the survey which patients placed most value on were: the proximity of the health centres; the treatment received from the health centre staff; and the confidence inspired by the doctors.

At the other end of the scale, the worst thing for users was the waiting time, both the waiting time in the centre and the amount of time waiting for an appointment.

The survey asked for a valuation between 1 and 10 for the public health system from those interviewed, and they gave an average of 6.5 percent to the service, three tenths of a percentage point above the national average.

According to this survey, health, education, housing, pensions and citizen security are the questions which raise most social interest.
The survey also asked about the Anti Tobacco Law. Some 38.2 percent of those interviewed thought that it was too strict, while 15.2 percent thought it should be tougher, and 38.3 percent thought it didn't need changing.