Service Quality, Customer (Patient) Satisfaction and Behavioural Intention in Health Care Services: Exploring the Indian Perspective

Abstract

As the health care sector in India gets more competitive, health care practitioners and academic researchers are increasingly interested in exploring how patients perceive the quality before building up their satisfaction levels and generating behavioural intentions. Hospitals today are increasingly realizing the need to focus on service quality as a measure to improve their competitive position. Customer based determinants and perceptions of service quality, therefore, play an important role when choosing a hospital. In this paper, we examine and measure the quality of services and its outcomes (patient’s satisfaction and behavioural intentions) provided by hospitals. In this regard, a review of literature on measuring service quality, patient satisfaction and behavioural intentions in health care scenario has been considered to investigate the direct influence of service quality on behavioural intentions and the mediating role of customer satisfaction on influencing behavioural intentions. The study focuses only on health care services offered by hospitals. Till today, few studies in the developing nations were conducted to understand the types of relationship that exists between three key constructs—service quality, patient satisfaction and behavioural intentions. Majority of the studies have been done in the developed country context, which cannot be generalized in the Indian context. It has been contended that constructs of service quality that are developed in one culture might not be applicable in another culture. This study analyses the suitability of service quality to improve customer satisfaction and in the process positively impacting behavioural intentions in the health care setting.

The role of hospital service quality in developing the satisfaction of the patients and hospital performance

“…Many researchers have adopted the two most widely recognized service quality scales in the healthcare set up. The two models that are commonly adopted by researchers are the ServQual model (Alghamdi, 2014;Aghamolaei, et al;2014;Parasuraman et al, 1988;Murti et al, 2013) and the ServPerf model (Lin et al, 2014;Brady et al, 2002;Cronin, & Taylor, 1992). However, the application of the ServQual and ServPerf models to healthcare services has yielded inconsistent and controversial results (Dagger et al, 2007;Priporas et al, 2008) and they have generated various quality domains (Dagger et al, 2007;Jarvis et al, 2003;Rohini & Mahadevappa, 2006;Zineldin, 2006).…”

“…Many researches have been conducted so for to examine the connection among patient satisfaction and healthcare quality. Apart from these studies it has also been proposed that patient satisfaction is an important construct that intervenes the impact of perceived service quality on the behaviors and various other results (Wu et al, 2016;Choi et al, 2005;Murti et al, 2013;Dagger et al, 2007;Vinagre & Neves, 2007). Patient satisfaction can also determine the degree of competitiveness among healthcare organizations.…”

Evaluation of the Impacts of Service Quality Dimensions on Patient/Customer Satisfaction: A Study of Private Hospitals in Nepal

“…The term customer/patient satisfaction is the degree to which customer feels gratified with product and service offered by organisation which is a tool for shaping customer's repurchase intention, customer loyalty, enhancing customer lifetime value, discouraging customer churn (Murti et al, 2013).…”

The Influence of Service Quality on Users' Behavioural Intentions in Developing Countries: A Cross-Sectional Study in Cape Verde's Public Hospitals

“…Considering cultural differences between Asian and Western societies, Raajpoot (2004) developed a culturally sensitive scale labelled PAKSERV to assess service quality in the Pakistani context, more appropriate for developing countries, and which has been applied and studied in Asian contexts, such as Thai higher education (Kashif, & Cheewakrakokbit, 2018), Pakistani higher education (Kashif, Ramayah, & Sarifuddin, 2016), Malaysian banking (Kashif et al, 2015), Pakistani Public Hospitals (Kashif et al, 2014), or Pakistani banking , and even in South African banking (Saunders, 2008). Nevertheless, despite the growing number of studies, most of these are focused on Western perspectives (e.g., Parasuraman et al, 1991;Parasuraman et al, 1988), and findings may not be generalized to other contexts (Murti et al, 2013). In fact, concerning developing countries there is a paucity of research in this area, especially in health care contexts, because the phenomenon has long been neglected by policy makers and managers in those countries, believing that quality assessment and assurance was a luxury confined to developed countries.…”