COVID-19 Pandemic and Healthcare Communication: A Patient-Centric Evaluation of Treatment and Diagnostic Procedures in Poland

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic spread extremely rapidly and required the implementation of interventions that were often chaotic or temporary, affecting both treatment and diagnostics. The aim of this study was to assess pa-tient perspectives on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the treatment and diagnosis process (ITDP). Material/Methods: Data were collected in a cross-sectional study via an online survey in March 2022 from 1860 people in the gen-eral Polish population (mean age: 48.82 & PLUSMN;16.57 years) who had received medical services in the previous 24 months. A binary logistic regression model was used to identify independent factors predicting a purely nega-tive assessment of the pandemic's impact on the treatment and diagnosis process. Results: Overall, 64.3% of the respondents rated the ITDP negatively, while 20.8% felt that the pandemic had both neg-ative and positive effects. Of the 22 factors, 16 showed a significant association with ITDP in univariate analy-ses and 8 qualified for the final multivariate model. In binary logistic regression, the strongest predictors of ex-clusively negative ITDP perceptions were found to be impaired communication with medical personnel, which was associated with the focus on COVID-19 issues (OR=2.82; 95% CI: 2.04-3.90), and a deteriorated family fi-nancial situation during the pandemic (OR=2.03; 95% CI: 1.26-3.27). Other significant predictors of negative ITDP perceptions were viewing remote services as posing a barrier to medical communication, being better ed-ucated, and making use of self-funded private medical care. Conclusions: The results of the survey confirmed that a negative assessment of the COVID-19 pandemic's ITDP is associat-ed with remote provision of medical services and communication difficulties.