Customer Quality and Rheumatoid Arthritis in the Iranian Patient's Perspective: A Cross-Sectional Study

Customer Quality (CQ) refers to customer’s characteristics and is related to the consumer knowledge, skills and self confidence in active participating in care process and life style improvement. This study was aimed to assess customer quality among people with Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) according to the patients’ perspective. This cross-sectional study was carried out on 170 patients who received care from specialist clinics of Isfahan University of Medical Sciences in 2013. Customer Quality was assessed using Comprehensive Quality Measurement in Health care questionnaire (CQMH_CQ). Questionnaire content validity was reviewed and confirmed by 10 experts and its reliability was confirmed based on Chronbach''s alpha index (α=0.803). SPSS-17 statistical software was used to analyze the data. Independent Samples T test and ANOVA were conducted to compare CQ score between categorical variables. The average CQ score was 70.25 (13.20). According to self-reported customer quality score, all participants achieved the scores at the level of stage one. Some (9.2%) of participants didn’t reach the action stage (stag three), then 90.8% took action in facing with health related problem and finally only 19.8% of participant achieved highest level of Self-management. Customer Quality score of employed patients (P=0.026) and patient who had active disease (P =0.030) were significantly. Customer quality scores of illiterate participants were lower than that of the educated (P= 0.001). According to overall score of customer quality, findings indicate the necessity of patients'' involvement in care process and self-thought behavior-change skills for ongoing self-management and enhancing their self care abilities in daily life.