In general, responsiveness contributes to health by promoting utilization, but that is not
always the case. Greater autonomy can mean that people do not take up an intervention
because they perceive the individual benefit to be small or the risk to be substantial, and do
not value the collective or population benefit. This is particularly likely for immunization,
especially if there is fear of adverse reactions. Individual freedom to choose whether or not
to be immunized is in conflict with the public health objective of high coverage to prevent
epidemics. Such conflict has occurred, for example, in the United Kingdom for pertussis
and in Greece for rubella vaccine (10). The overall performance of a health system may
therefore involve trade-offs among objectives.
Opinions on how well a health system performs on such subjective dimensions as responsiveness
might be influenced by any of a number of features of the systems themselves,
or of the respondents. Since poor people may expect less than rich people, and be
more satisfied with unresponsive services, measures of responsiveness should correct for these differences, as well as for cultural differences among countries (11). Even without
such adjustment, comparisons of how knowledgeable observers rate health system achievements
can reveal on which aspects of responsiveness a system seems to satisfy its users
best. Judgements about average level and inequality of the components of responsiveness
were developed in each of 35 countries by a network of 50 or more key informants. A
separate survey of over a thousand respondents was used to develop weights for combining
these scores into an overall rating. Box 2.2 describes the results of this exercise. Estimates
for other Member States were derived from the 35 observations, adjusted for
differences among countries and informant groups. Surveys of population opinion and
direct observation of health provision can both be used to complement these judgements.
Figure 2.4 illustrates in detail the scores of the seven individual elements, relative to the
overall score, within each of 13 countries chosen to reflect all WHO Regions and typical of
the entire set of countries studied. The health systems examined always appear to perform
relatively well on the two dimensions of access to social support networks and confidentiality,
sometimes very much better than on other aspects. The systematically high rating for
social support may reflect a trade-off against the quality of amenities, because a health care
facility that cannot, for lack of resources, offer good quality food or non-medical attention
can compensate for that by allowing relatives and friends to attend to patients’ needs. One
reason why confidentiality seems not to be a problem in these countries may be that there
is little private insurance and therefore little risk of coverage being denied because a provider
reveals some information about a patient. There is somewhat less consistency at the
other end of the scale, but autonomy is among the three lowest-rated elements of responsiveness
34 times out of 35 – and the lowest ranked element almost half the time – and
performance is also often poor with respect to choice of provider and promptness of care.
As with health status, it is not only overall responsiveness that matters, if some people
are treated with courtesy while others are humiliated or disdained. A perfectly fair health
system would make no such distinctions, and would receive the same rating of responsiveness on
every element, for every group in the population. In almost every country where key informants
were surveyed, the poor were identified as the main disadvantaged group. In particular,
they were considered to be treated with less respect for their dignity, to have less choice of
providers and to be offered poorer quality amenities than the non-poor. In nearly as many
cases, rural populations – among whom the poor are concentrated – were regarded as
being treated worse than urban dwellers, suffering especially from less prompt attention,
less choice of providers and lower quality of amenities. Some respondents in one or several
countries also identified women, children or adolescents, indigenous or tribal groups or
others as receiving worse treatment than the rest of the population.
The elements of client orientation, where the poor and the rural population are less well
treated, all have economic implications: it generally costs more to assure quick attention
and to offer high quality food, more space and well-kept facilities. It also makes cost control
harder if people are allowed to choose their providers, and costs differ among them. The
strongest associations occur for quality of basic amenities and promptness of attention. The
former is closely related to income per head and to the share of private expenditure in total
health spending; the latter is closely related to average years of schooling of the population,
which is also associated with income. In contrast, the elements of respect for persons can
be costless, apart perhaps from some training of providers and administrators. These elements
– respect for dignity, autonomy, and confidentiality – show no relation to health
system spending. There is scope for improving health system performance in these respects
without taking any resources away from the primary objective of better health. This