Investigating Patient Rights and Associated Demographic and Hospital Factors Using Approach of Two-Level Linear Regression Models In the Hospitals of Tehran University of Medical Sciences

One of the main issues in hospitals is evaluation of efficiency and effectiveness. For this purpose, several indicators are presented, which are known as functional indicators. If the performance of hospitals depends on the patient's demographic characteristics, overlooking effect of hospital indicators, as an effective factor at a higher level on the patient rights, may lead to inaccurate conclusions about these relationships. In such cases, where the data are intrinsically multilevel, the use of multi-level statistical models for this type of data is useful. Samples were collected from eight hospitals of Tehran University of Medical Sciences during 2013 in a two stage cluster. Data on patient rights and demographic information were collected from 375 patients by a questionnaire. The patient's rights rate was measured by multivariate statistical analysis and factor analysis. Two-level linear regression models were used to examine the relationship between patients' rights and some demographic information. The first level was demographic factors and the second level was hospital factors. The results showed that rate of considering patients' rights in hospitals were in moderate level. About 16% of the variance of the dependent variable of patient's rights, which was significant, is due to variations at the higher level of the hospital and other variations at the individual level. Furthermore, variables of bed occupancy, complaint rate, and hospital escape rate at the higher level (Hospital) have a significant impact on the patient's rights.