Patient Satisfaction with Health Care Services in Albania

Health sector in Albania suffers from inefficiencies and disparities. Money under the table are very common especially in public institutions comprising almost more than half of the total health expenditures spent by the government for this sector. Furthermore, the poorest individuals are not part of the mandatatory health insurance schemes exacerbating even more their economic conditions. Moreover health performance indicators are not clearly defined, making health service quality remaining a significant concern. For this purpose there is an absolute need of evaluating health sector performance which is closely related to the establishment of indicators as part of the general assessment of the health system, where the main goal is its consolidation and improvement of services provided. Thus, for a better assessment of health care it is important to evaluate all indicators as per their scientific importance, including reliability, validity and use. In Albania indicators’ used are far from the ones used worldwide; still their utilization is reported as a significant progress and are considered as a positive initiative for health sector performance measurement. However, still no efforts are made to introduce practices to assess health performance quality in hospitals along with integration of appropriate indicators and other instruments widely accepted for evaluation.