A strong 2 or 2.36 is the average rating that citizens gave to the quality of public healthcare on a scale of 1 to 5, according to the latest poll conducted by the Skopje Institute for Political Research for Detektor.

According to the poll, 29.9% of the respondents rated public healthcare with 1, evaluating the quality as very bad. In addition, 24.8% of the respondents rated it with 2 and 26.3% gave a rating of 3. Public health received a rating of 4 from 8.9% of the respondents, while 3.3% rated the quality of public healthcare with an excellent five.

It is interesting that the citizens from the Skopje region rated the quality of healthcare as very poor, despite the fact that the largest healthcare facilities are located in the capital.

Citizens are generally dissatisfied with everything in public health. This attitude is shared by 26.2%. 21.1% are most bothered by the appointment process and the waiting time for an examination. 14.9% are not satisfied with the doctors and 8.2% with the infrastructure. The citizens expressed the least dissatisfaction with the nurses.

Compared to the poll conducted by IPIS for Detektor in 2019, citizens reflect even greater dissatisfaction, considering that the general dissatisfaction with healthcare was 19.5% 4 years ago and now it is 26.2%.

Almost half of the citizens believe that public healthcare was better 5 years ago. 49.7% say that the quality of public healthcare compared to 5 years ago is at a lower level today. 31.8% believe that there are no changes, while 12.4% are of the opinion that today’s healthcare is better than what we had 5 years ago. And here the comparison with the poll that Detektor published in 2019 shows that citizens are significantly more dissatisfied today than 4 years ago.

In conditions of strong dissatisfaction with the quality offered by public healthcare, 22.7% of citizens say that they go to see a doctor more often in private healthcare facilities. Over two-thirds of the citizens or 69.8% are treated exclusively in public healthcare.

Almost two-thirds of the respondents or 62.3% say that they have no problem with medicines, that is, that the pharmacies are well supplied throughout the month and that it is not a problem to get prescription medicines. 30.5% of citizens are convinced otherwise.

Nearly three-quarters of all respondents, or exactly 73.9%, say that Macedonia currently does not meet the standards and recommendations of the European Union regarding the quality of healthcare. 17.3% of citizens believe that we have healthcare in accordance with European standards. And this is an issue for which we have data from the poll in 2019, and they show that today the citizens have a significantly more negative opinion about respecting European standards in Macedonian healthcare.

If in 2019, 33.2% believed that we have healthcare in accordance with the standards of the European Union, today that number has almost halved to 17.3%. The number of citizens who believe that our healthcare is far from the European Union jumped from 57.6% in 2019 to 73.9% in the latest poll.

The poll of the Institute for Political Research Skopje was conducted in the period from February 28 to March 3 this year on a representative sample of 1107 respondents.