Primary care quality: community health center and health maintenance organization.
OBJECTIVE
This study compares the primary health care quality of community health centers (CHCs) and health maintenance organizations (HMOs) in South Carolina to elucidate the quality of CHC performance relative to mainstream settings such as the HMO.


METHODS
Mail surveys were used to obtain data from 350 randomly selected HMO users. Surveys with follow-up interviews were conducted to obtain data from 540 randomly selected CHC users. A validated adult primary care assessment tool was used in both surveys. Multivariate analyses were performed to assess the association of health care setting (HMO versus CHC) with primary care quality while controlling for sociodemographic and health care characteristics.


RESULTS
After controlling for sociodemographic and health care use measures, CHC patients demonstrated higher scores in several primary care domains (ongoing care, coordination of service, comprehensiveness, and community orientation) as well as total primary care performance.


CONCLUSIONS
Users of CHC are more likely than HMO users to rate their primary health care provider as good, except in the area of ease of first contact. The positive rating of the CHC is particularly impressive after taking into account that many CHC users have characteristics associated with poorer ratings of care.
D000328:Adult; D003151:Community Health Centers / Q000592:standards* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D003159:Community-Institutional Relations / Q000592:standards; D003191:Comprehensive Health Care / Q000592:standards; D003266:Continuity of Patient Care / Q000592:standards; D019538:Health Care Surveys; D006279:Health Maintenance Organizations / Q000592:standards* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D006297:Health Services Accessibility / Q000592:standards; D006801:Humans; D016018:Least-Squares Analysis; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D017060:Patient Satisfaction; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations; D011320:Primary Health Care / Q000592:standards* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D019984:Quality Indicators, Health Care; D011787:Quality of Health Care; D012044:Regression Analysis; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D013022:South Carolina; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires