Objective To examine the satisfaction to traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) services and its influencing factors among urban and rural residents in Shandong province and to provide evidences for promoting TCM services in the province.
Methods We conducted a face-to-face interview with a self-designed questionnaire among 2 965 urban and rural residents recruited with stratified random sampling in 17 prefectures across Shandong province in January 2017. Factor analysis was used to evaluate the satisfaction to TCM services and unconditional multivariate logistic regression model was adopted to analyze influencing factors of the satisfaction among the participants.
Results The participants′ scores of satisfaction to TCM services were 3.64 ± 0.95 for medical technology, 3.58 ± 0.92 for service items, 3.78 ± 0.96 for types of medicine, 3.31 ± 1.04 for treatment expense, 3.66 ± 0.94 for service attitude, 3.20 ± 1.11 for reimbursement rate, 3.30 ± 1.05 for waiting time, and 1.45 ± 0.79 for treatment effect, respectively. Factor analysis revealed actual medical service capability and medication expense being the two common factors for TCM service which contributed a cumulative variance of 55.01%. The top three prefecture-specific mean score of actual TCM service capability were 0.874, 0.699 and 0.663; the top three prefecture-specific mean score of TCM medication expense were 1.405, 0.383 and 0.234 points; the top three prefecture-specific mean overall score of TCM service were 0.245, 0.210 and 0.185 points. Of all the participants, 48.33% (1 431) reported the satisfaction to TCM services. The results of logistic regression analysis demonstrated that the participants living in regions with township hospitals or community health centers providing TCM service were more likely to report the satisfaction to TCM service; while, the participants with a annual household income of ≥ 10 000 RMB yuan per capita were less likely to report the satisfaction to TCM service.
Conclusion The satisfaction to TCM service is at a relatively low level and mainly associates with average annual household income and the allocation of township or community medical institution providing TCM service among the urban and rural residents in Shandong province.
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