Performance evaluation in primary care: pilot survey in Hungary and proposal for a European survey

Csaba Móczár, János Sándor

Keywords: performance evaluation, primary care, safe, efficient patient care

Background:

In our cross-sectional study conducted in 3% (n=166) of the Hungarian general medical practices that
provide care for adults, we found that half of the GPs:
 don’t know how their own professional performance compares to domestic conditions?
 don’t know what time trend their performance shows in their own practice?
 don’t know what efficiency their colleagues working in their immediate environment achieve
in their care practices?
 he/she did not prepare a report for the local government about his/her own work.
 he/she is not used to talking to his/her colleagues about the efficiency of their work.
 have never received a comprehensive assessment of the effectiveness of domestic primary
care?
 would require that their work be regularly evaluated compared to the domestic reference
level.
According to our observations, in Hungarian primary care, there is no meaningful and public
performance evaluation, which does not meet the patient's interests but also does not enable
continuous quality improvement for GPs. These findings are in concordance with the PHAMEU (2009-
2010) survey, which described that the Hungarian primary health care was one of the weakest in
Europe, the primary reason being the poor management of the system and poor coordination of
services.

Research questions:

We aimed to determine how GPs can evaluate their performance, how they can determine the
weak points of their own practice.

Method:

we plan to repeat the survey in Hungary, which we would like to implement together with
international partners. For the planned survey, partners should select a representative sample of
GPs, and they should participate in the further development of the questionnaires already used in
Hungary should take part in the joint data processing.

Results:

Conclusions:

Points for discussion:

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