Consumers today are more aware of the offered alternatives and rising standards of services, thus their expectations have increased markedly. 1 With the pressure of competition and the increasing necessity to deliver to the satisfaction of patients, the elements of looking at the quality issues in healthcare and provider understanding of patients' preferences and satisfaction attributes have become an absolute necessity. Like any service provider, it is crucial for healthcare providers to constantly determine the factors associated with the satisfaction of patients with the quality of healthcare provided to understand what is valued by the patient, how the quality of care is constructed by the patient and to determine how service improvement can be made and prioritized in a health service with limited resources.Understanding the perception and narrowing the gap between the customer's expectation and what can actually be provided should be what any organization works to accomplish. Thus, it is logic that the quality of health services be evaluated on the basis of the patients, who are after all the final recipient of the process outcome of the services, since the health service's product primarily concerns the patients themselves and their families.Researchers such as Charles et al. (1999) and Hausman (2004) found that patients desire a shift from the usual classic approach in which the doctor has a dominant role and makes the decision on his own, to patient oriented approach, a more informative, shared and negotiated approach in which the patient can exchange information with staff and has a more active role in the decision making. 2,3Patient's point of view helps the provider to be more sensitive and responsive to the specific needs of the individual patient to offer patient oriented approach and it helps patients to obtain the more personalized and holistic medical attention that they seek. 4 Looking at the whole picture, when patients get response to their specific needs and receive good quality communication for example, not only do they tend to be more satisfied with the care received, but they exercise greater adherence to agreed treatment plans and courses of action and seem to make more rapid recoveries with fewer complications, and thus may reduce the cost of delivering the service.
The findings of this research are therefore informative of the need to implement strategies that deal effectively with such attitudes and create the platform and programs that reinforce the culture of good quality service amongst healthcare providers, managers in particular, and to improve patient satisfaction.
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