Path Analysis for Discovering Relations among Service Quality, Physician-Patient Relationship, Satisfaction, and Loyalty: Case Study of a Private Metropolitan Clinic

• Main Authors: Kang, Lih-Jiun, 康立君
• Other Authors: Chen, Yung-Fu
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2014
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/kjw6dv

碩士 === 中臺科技大學 === 長期整合照護與福祉服務產業碩士專班 === 102 === Background: Due to the regulation of national global budget payment system of Taiwan National Health Insurance (NHI), the service spending of health care industry is highly constrained by the regulation. However, as the increase of life quality and medical knowledge, the patients are expecting to receive better quality of medical services. Therefore, under limited medical resources, how to maintain high-quality medical services and physician-patient relationship to enhance patient satisfaction, which in turn increases the revisiting rate, is an important issue for clinic managers. Purpose: This research is to investigate the impact of quality of medical services on patient satisfaction, which can be measured with degree of loyalty defined as number of revisits, for a clinic. The result is expected to be useful to help the clinic improve the quality of medical services and promote the patient satisfaction, as well as providing recommendations for operating managers. Method: In this research, the patients of a clinic in Taichung City received a structured questionnaire for evaluating their satisfaction and loyalty of the provided medical services. Using stratified random sampling method, a total of 539 copies of structured questionnaires were disseminated with 521 valid questionnaires collected. SPSS (version 18) and Amos (version 17) software tools were used for statistical analysis and structure equation model analysis. Results: The results show that the quality of medical service has higher impact on patient loyalty than the physician-patient relationship. In addition, the quality of medical service has higher impact on patient satisfaction than the doctor-patient relationship. This mimics that the quality of medical care is shown to be able to promote patient loyalty and satisfaction. Hence, patient’s decision on choosing medical treatment is affected by the satisfaction of medical care quality. Doctor-patient relationship only has a mild effect to the service quality and patient loyalty. Therefore, when the patients make their decision to seek for the medical service, the patient’s past satisfaction is not the only factor affecting the patient loyalty, but its impact is likely to be significant. Key words: clinic medical service quality, service quality, doctor-patient relationship, patient’s satisfaction, loyalty