Cause-and-Effect Relationship Between Service Quality Perception and Patients Satisfaction with Special Reference to Private Diabetic Clinics

Abstract

Background: Healthcare industry in India is growing at a tremendous pace owing to its strengthening coverage, services, and increasing expenditure by public as well as private players. Healthcare outfits as organizations pretty much depend on patient admissions. So ultimately, this brings emphasis on importance of the healthcare consumers and impact of their behavior on hospital’s performance. This paper seeks to find out (1) impact of socioeconomic profile of the patients on service quality perception, (2) impact of service quality perception on patient’s behavior, and (3) assess the usability of such impact to formulate healthcare strategy. This study is basically an exploratory cum causal research, which attempts to explore certain relationships between socioeconomic characteristics versus behavioral characteristics of patients. The data were collected from 800 small and medium private clinics where competition is stringent. The resultant data assumed to be related to three constructs viz. socioeconomic profile, service quality perception, and patient’s behavior. There are 13 variables in the dataset. Study used reliability analysis to evaluate the internal consistency in the data. Factor analysis together with structural equation modeling was used to evaluate study constructs. Certain socioeconomic characteristics are significant towards certain service quality dimensions. There is also certain level of evidence in support of study proposition that patient’s satisfaction and attitude depends on their perception of service quality. The hospitals as healthcare organizations can make use of the impact of socioeconomic profile of patients while strategizing care so that it impacts patient’s service quality perception. More specifically, while strategizing patient’s perception of accuracy, the hospitals can make use of entire socioeconomic makeup as a single construct.

Keywords: Service Quality, Healthcare Service, Patients Perception, Patients Attitude, Patients Satisfaction

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