The Role of Clinical and Process Quality in Achieving Patient Satisfaction in Hospitals

Abstract

Managers constantly struggle with where to allocate their resources and efforts in managing the complex service delivery system called a hospital. In the broadest sense, their decisions and actions focus on two important aspects of health care-clinical or technical medical care that emphasizes "what" the patient receives and process performance that emphasizes "how" health care services are delivered to patients. Here, we investigate the role of leadership, clinical quality, and process quality on patient satisfaction. A causal model is hypothesized and evaluated using structural equation modeling for a sample of 202 U.S. hospitals. Statistical results support the idea that leadership is a good exogenous construct and that clinical and process quality are good intermediate outcomes in determining patient satisfaction. Statistical results also suggest that hospital leadership has more influence on process quality than on clinical quality, which is predominantly the doctors' domain. Other results are discussed, such as that hospital managers must be mindful of the fact that process quality is at least as important as clinical quality in predicting patient satisfaction. The article concludes by proposing areas for future research.

Accessing antecedents and outcomes of RFID implementation in health care

“…Li and Benton (2003) measured the impact of hospital management decisions on cost performance and quality performance, while Li and Benton (2006) investigated the impact of hospital technology and nurse staffing management decisions on cost performance and quality performance. Patient satisfaction was measured as an outcome by Meyer and Collier (2001) and by Marley et al (2004). All three performance constructs were used in a structural model by Li et al (2002) who found that hospital quality performance indirectly affected hospital financial performance and that cost performance directly affected hospital financial performance.…”

“…Li and Collier (2000), Marley et al (2004), Wicks et al (2006), Correa et al (2007), Schwaitzberg (2006), Janz et al (2007), Chao et al (2007) Barriers The extent to which possible obstacles reject or delay the implementation of RFID including cost, a lack of understanding, technical issues, and privacy concerns.…”

“…Li (1997), Li and Collier (2000), Meyer and Collier (2001), Li et al (2002), Li andBenton (2003, 2006), Marley et al (2004), Note: the model fit statistics could not be obtained for the constructs with three items. In these cases, a two-factor model was tested by adding the items of another construct.…”

Patients’ Satisfactions from Public Hospitals Services in Alkharj and Hotat Bani Tamim: A Comparative Study

“…The results of the study based on testing the mean differences between expectations and perception indicated that patients' perceived value of the services exceeded expectations for all the variables measured. Marley, Collier and Goldstein (2004) investigated the quality service delivery from managers, clinical and process quality to patients. Causal model used with a sample of two hundred two hospitals in the United States.…”

Investigation of Drivers and Determinants of Inpatient and Outpatient Satisfaction in Public Ambulatory and Hospital Departments

“…There are notable examples of healthcare institutions that have used patient satisfaction as an organizational performance and quality management tool. In example, evaluation of patient satisfaction has been mandatory for all French hospitals since 1996, while for NHS trusts in England and hospitals in Germany it became mandatory since 2002 and 2005 respectively [8,9,10].…”