Influence of continuous quality improvement on patients’ satisfaction within hospitals in Nairobi, Kenya

Abstract

The study examined the influence of implementation of continuous quality improvement (CQI) on patient satisfaction in hospitals within Nairobi. Literature from developed countries indicates that the application of continuous quality improvement has a significant influence on customer satisfaction. However, there is limited literature originating from developing countries. This study aimed at understanding the influence of continuous quality improvements such as Innovativeness, Quality Indicators, Information sharing and Risk management on customer (patient) satisfaction. To reinforce the study, theoretical and empirical review on the CQI and customer (patient) satisfaction was conducted from current and classical literature adopting the total quality management theory of profound knowledge, and the expectation confirmation theory. The mixed research design was used to target employees and patients of hospitals within Nairobi, from whom data was collected through a self-administered questionnaire. Simple random sampling was used to select hospital employees while stratified random sampling was used to select the patients. The questions were placed on a five-point Likert scale. The results of this study showed that innovativeness, information sharing, and risk management significantly influenced patients’ satisfaction, while quality indicators had no significant influence on patients’ satisfaction. This study, therefore, concluded that continuous quality improvement positively and significantly predicted patients’ satisfaction within the hospitals in Nairobi. The study findings guided the researcher to recommend among other things, leaders in the healthcare industry to draw customer satisfaction through the CQI application. Achieved through feedback from the patients and utilizing such information to improve the patient experiences. The researcher proposes that future studies be carried to cut across other industries that were not captured.