[Perception of the quality of care in the health services in Mexico. perspective of the users].
OBJECTIVE
To describe the quality of health services as perceived by users in Mexico, as well as an analysis of predisposing and enabling factors to the use of these services.


METHODS
Data were selected from the National Health Survey II of 1994. The survey contains information from 3324 ambulatory health service users who sought care in the two week period previous to the survey.


RESULTS
81.2% of users perceived the quality as good and 18.8% thought it was poor. The main reasons for good quality of care were: personal attention (23.3%) improvement of the health problem (11.9%). For poor quality of care, the main reasons were: long waiting time (23.7%) and poor clinical examination (11.7%) Social security health service users perceived 2.6 times more frequently quality of attention as poor, than those who consulted private health services. Quality is represented by the aspects of the attention process (44.8% 9, its results (21.3%), the structure (18.0%) and accessibility (15.7%) The main reasons for not returning to the same health service center were: deficient attention (18.2%) and long waiting times (11.8%).


CONCLUSIONS
The perspective of the population should be studied further and actions for the continuous improvement of the quality of health care should be implemented.
Ramírez-Sánchez
T J
TJ
Centro de Investigación en Sistemas de Salud, Instituto Nacional de Salud Pública (INSP), México.
Nájera-Aguilar
P
P
Nigenda-López
G
G
D003258:Consumer Behavior; D005260:Female; D019538:Health Care Surveys / Q000592:standards*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008800:Mexico; D009313:National Health Programs / Q000592:standards; D011787:Quality of Health Care / Q000592:standards*