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A recent study shows that patients within Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) ambulance care were pleased with the care received and the competence of the ambulance staff, and the patients experienced a sense of safety. The study ‘An Ambulance Service evaluation of Quality Control Measures based on patients' perception in Qatar’ aims to understand if any correlation exists between quality management and patients using the ambulance service.
“The results seem to be driven by providing service within promised timeframes, access to care, and patients’ perception of ambulance staff’s willingness to help,” revealed the study by Glenhael Carolus, Kanhaiya Kumar Singh, Jalal Younes Abid and Guillaume Alinier. It is published by Hamad Bin Khalifa University Press Qscience.
The ambulance service response time is within 10 minutes inside Doha and within 15 minutes outside Doha.
Responders to the survey have also agreed that ambulance service staff were sympathetic, reliable, trustworthy, polite, concerned and prompt in providing service.
The survey was distributed to adult patients transported by the ambulance service’s emergency division to the Hamad General Hospital’s See and Treat unit in Doha. The patients had to be free from serious injury or illness, fully conscious, and with re-collection of the service received.
The survey initially had five SERVQUAL dimensions: reliability, assurance, tangibility, empathy, and responsiveness, which are common in a research. The sixth dimension, quality control, was added. The responders to the survey were at the average age of 33 years and majority of them were from Asian countries.
“Most of the SERVQUAL dimensions had strong correlations with quality control. Interestingly, there was a weak correlation between assurance and quality control and a moderate correlation between tangibility and quality control,” the study said. It added: “An awareness of the variables with strong correlations is indicative of the significant impact quality control measures have and the associated perception of importance held by patients. This study sheds light on the importance of evaluating quality processes and limiting internal costs. The number of patients by continent of origin did not enable valid statistical tests based on that variable.
The Ambulance Service’s quality control measures appear to maintain favorable patients’ perceptions of services received.”
In 2020 the Ambulance Service attended to 379,212 cases. They included 268,953 calls related to emergency cases and 110,259 scheduled patient transport such as transferring patients between HMC hospitals, and from home to hospitals for regular care. Between January 2021 and November 2021, the ambulance service had attended to 352,785 cases, including 245,610 emergency calls and 107,175 scheduled patient transfers.
