Patient’s Perception on Factors for Choice of Healthcare Delivery at Public Hospitals in Dodoma City

Globally health is regarded as a human capital and thus healthcare delivery is treated as of crucial importance to all communities. Both non-price and price factors play a significant role in determining the patient’s choice for healthcare delivery providers. Recently public hospitals have shown to face fairly growing community expectations, though they still perceived to have low quality healthcare, thus the intent of the study. Employing Chi-square and five point likert scale questions patient’s choice and perception were assessed. The results show that there is greater relationship between age and patient’s choices to attend at public hospitals, while education, sex and patient’s occupation were not significant. Moreover, treatment cost, distance from the hospital, and location of the hospital and medicine availability were key indicators for patient’s choice. Improvement of medicine availability and reduction of treatment cost is needed so as to attract patients in public hospitals. Since patient’s choices are not completely rational, further research should be done on health outcome factors that influence patient’s choice in order to integrate healthcare provider and health outcome factors towards improvements of quality health services at public hospitals