BACKGROUND: Several recent German studies indicate an association between social inequality and quality of health care, i.e., patients with a low socioeconomic position receive lower quality care than patients with a high position. In this study, we investigate whether two indicators of social inequality (education and income) are associated with the perceived quality of the doctor-patient relationship among chronically ill men and women. METHOD: Data basis is the TNS Health Care Access Panel (N=27 049). For the analyses chronically ill respondents were selected from the sample (N=12 343). In a multiple logistic regression analysis, odds ratios were calculated separately for men and women and for three age groups (18-30, 31-60, 61 years and older). We used three indicators for measuring the quality in the doctor-patient relationship: trust in physician, information received from the physician and participation in the decision-making process. RESULTS: Results show that income and education are consistently though weakly associated with the perceived quality of the doctor-patient relationship. Among chronically ill men and women with comparatively low income and educational level odds for rating the perceived quality of health care as suboptimal are slightly higher. This is especially true for the group of old chronically ill persons (61 years and older). DISCUSSION: Social inequality is associated with perceived quality of health care among chronically ill older men and women in Germany. These inequalities in health care can be explained by patient factors (e.g., information seeking, participation seeking) and physician related factors (e.g., providing information).
