Balearic hospitals slightly “under par”

Amajority figure of 78.3 percent of Balearic citizens who underwent hospitalisation last year or who experienced the need for one of the members of their household to go into hospital, described the attention they received as good (45.9%), or “very good” (32.4%). However, according to information from a Health Service study covering 2003, the other side of the coin reveals that 18.9 percent of those interviewd listed the hospital service as “leaving something to be desired” and 2.7 percent slammed their individual experiences as being “deplorable”. The State average of satisfaction for hospital attention situated comfortably at 81.8 percent, meaning that the Balearics were under par in this regard. The Health ministry study showed that 42.5 percent of Island citizens were hospitalised, or had someone living in the same household who had to go into hospital, private or public, during the course of last year. Of those hospitalised, 45.9 percent had to undergo an operation of some kind, 21 percent needed specific treatment; 5.4 percent had to go in response to particular tests or analyses; and a final section categorised under ”other reasons” went to make up 27 percent of cases. The majority of those who were hospitalised, or who had family members who had to undergo operations (64.7%), received official notification of the time they would have to wait for surgery, and also the majority (59.2%), were notified in writing of the risks of undergoing surgery. A significant proportion (74%) believed they were sent sufficient information on the risks that they would be exposed to when undergoing tests, treatments and operations; and 86.4 percent had been assigned to a professional who took responsibility for the attention that the patient received. In respect of the fulfilling of expectations, 48.6 percent of those interviewed gave assurances that the attention received in hospital centres was better than they had been expecting, and 32.4 percent said they had received the quality of care they had been expecting. The Health Study interviewees used a scale of judgement from 1 to 10 (from “totally unsatisfactory to “totally satisfactory”). In the views of patients taking part in the research, Balearic hospitals “let them down” on the number of people per room (3.8) and the waiting time for non-urgent treatment (4.2).