Policy Effects on the Quality of Public Health Care: Evaluating Portuguese Public Hospitals’ Quality through Customers’ Views

• Main Authors: Fonseca Jaime R. S., Ramos Rosária M. P., Santos Ana M. P., Fonseca Ana P. S. S.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Sciendo 2015-12-01
• Series: Central European Journal of Public Policy
• Subjects: public administration; public policies; health care evaluation; patients’ views; latent segment models; customer satisfaction; portugal
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1515/cejpp-2016-0015

In this paper, public health care administration issues are reviewed and public hospital patients’ views on quality of health care are empirically tested. The purpose is to support the recommendation of new public policies that lead to better performance, if necessary. Hospital patients’ views on service quality were assessed through a questionnaire to estimate a global customer satisfaction measure. We argue that customer satisfaction should be measured through multiple indicators, as a latent variable. Thus, we considered the latent segment models (LSM) approach to assess customer service satisfaction. We found a twosegment latent structure: segment 1, the satisfied, with 48 percent of patients, mostly male and middle-aged patients; and segment 2, the unsatisfied, with 52 percent of patients, mostly female and youngest/oldest patients.