Influence of Patients’ Rights Charter on Health Systems Responsiveness in Selected Counties in Kenya: Health Care Provider Perspective

Abstract

Health care providers are frontline workers whose roles include ensuring health systems responsiveness. Responsiveness is one of the goals of health systems set out by WHO in 2000 though the role of health care providers in the implementation process has not been clearly documented. Patients’ rights charter has been implemented in health systems for a while now. The objectives of the study were to establish health care providers awareness of patients’ rights charter and establish how the health care provider practice of patients’ rights charter influence responsiveness of health systems in primary care settings. An exploratory cross sectional descriptive study was conducted using a psychometric semi structured questionnaire to quantitative data from 62 health care providers in four tier 2 health facilities who were purposively sampled in two counties. Qualitative data was collected from four key informants in charges from the health facilities. Data was analyzed using SPSS 25. Results demonstrated that health care provider awareness of the content of patients’ rights charter (r =.612*, P ˂ .001) and practice of patient’s right charter (r =.610*, P ˂ .001) were statistically significant and influenced health systems responsiveness. On the individual responsiveness domains, health care providers did not regard access to social support as being influenced by the practice of patients’ rights charter. (r=0.209, P ˂0.001) but it slightly correlated to awareness (r=0.294*, P ˂.001) of patients’ rights charter. It was concluded that Implementation of patients’ rights charter influences responsiveness of health systems. Effective governance of health systems requires to implementation of policies that incorporate monitoring of progress through documentation of practices that enhance both patients’ rights and responsiveness. Documentation of best practice can be replicated in other primary care facilities support achievement of responsiveness by health care providers.