The Assessment of Health Services for Children in Romania
The Assessment of Health Services for Children in Romania

Summary/Abstract: This paper starts from an extensive study concerning the assessment of children’s well-being and outlines a possible model of evaluating the health services to which they have access. The study was conducted in two stages, having a qualitative and a quantitative component. We selected for the analysis only the area of health, to which we will be refer throughout the paper. In the first stage we used the method of sociological survey through interview and the data collection was conducted through the focus group technique, and in the second stage we used the survey based on questionnaire. In our approach we attempt to answer the following research questions: Are there differences between the assessment of health services by residents of urban and rural areas? What are the causes of the differences between evaluations? The results of the study emphasize that a significant percentage of participants said they had a good health condition, the differences between urban and rural areas being low. The children from urban areas have benefited in a higher degree from consultation at the specialist doctor, family doctor, dentist and private healthcare services. The analysis of the survey data shows that rural respondents evaluated health services in a significantly better way than those from urban areas. The developed regression model shows that living in rural areas, together with satisfaction with health condition and standard of living are predictor-variables for the assessment of health services. Implications for the construction of an instrument which objectively assess the health system are discussed.

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