Corruption and Care: How Informal Payments Shape Patient Satisfaction in Romania?

The present database regards a satisfaction questionnaire containing patients admitted to state hospitals in Romania. The remaining sample to be used for multivariate data analysis purposes consists of 346 medical service providers, summing up to 16262 observations. The time period for this analysis ranges between 2021-2024, using monthly observations. The dependent variable that we selected reflects informal payments, measured by two essential indicators: a) Bribe, which captures unofficial payments made by patients to medical personnel, and b) AntiC, which assesses patients' attitude and behavior towards the phenomenon of corruption in the health system. The main independent variables focus on medical personnel, analyzing the interaction with: a) doctors and b) nurses separately. In the case of Doctors, aspects such as perceived professional competence, the quality of doctor-patient communication, the time allocated to consultations, the degree of empathy and respect shown, the clarity of explanations regarding diagnosis and treatment, as well as the doctor's availability for patient questions and concerns are included. For Nurses, the variables measure their promptness in responding to patient needs, kindness and caring attitude, technical competence in performing procedures, frequency of monitoring patient condition, quality of assistance in daily activities, and ability to clearly communicate medical information. The control variables include a) treatment and b) hospital-related aspects. Treatment covers aspects such as the type of medical intervention received, the complexity and duration of treatment, the medication administered, and the procedures or investigations performed. Hospital characteristics include the size and type of health facility, geographical location (urban or rural), technical equipment and infrastructure, reputation of the institution, bed capacity and occupancy rate, and available human resources. This structure of variables allows for the systematic analysis of the correlation between the perceived quality of medical services provided by hospital staff and the incidence of informal payments. The analysis of database conducts to important results on validating the Research hypothesis: The more pleased by the medical personnel the patients are, the less informal payments they are solicited and the less medical anticorruption reports there are.