Development and validation of the Vietnamese primary care assessment tool

OBJECTIVE To adapt the consumer version of the Primary Care Assessment Tool (PCAT) for Vietnam and determine its internal consistency and validity. DESIGN A quantitative cross sectional study. SETTING 56 communes in 3 representative provinces of central Vietnam. PARTICIPANTS Total of 3289 people who used health care services at health facility at least once over the past two years. RESULTS The Vietnamese adult expanded consumer version of the PCAT (VN PCAT-AE) is an instrument for evaluation of primary care in Vietnam with 70 items comprising six scales representing four core primary care domains, and three additional scales representing three derivative domains. Sixteen other items from the original tool were not included in the final instrument, due to problems with missing values, floor or ceiling effects, and item-total correlations. All the retained scales have a Cronbach's alpha above 0.70 except for the subscale of Family Centeredness. CONCLUSIONS The VN PCAT-AE demonstrates adequate internal consistency and validity to be used as an effective tool for measuring the quality of primary care in Vietnam from the consumer perspective. Additional work in the future to optimize valid measurement in all domains consistent with the original version of the tool may be helpful as the primary care system in Vietnam further develops.