Modelling health care customer satisfaction: Evidence from Serbia

Abstract

Customer loyalty, with satisfaction of customers as its main precondition, has long been regarded as an overarching goal of service businesses. With the proliferation of health care providers, which brought about rising competitive pressures on the market, the issue of how to satisfy and keep patients has been attracting increasing attention of researchers and health care management. Therefore, this study aims to examine the antecedents of patient satisfaction and its direct and mediated impact on patients' behavioural intentions in thus far under-studied context of emerging economy's health care system. The study has been conducted in a primary health care setting, on a convenience sample of 300 patients, by means of structured questionnaire. The application of structural equation modelling (SEM) revealed direct impact of health care service quality on patient satisfaction and its mediated impact on satisfaction, via perceived value of health care services. In addition to direct influence of satisfaction on patients' behavioural intentions, its total effect on positive intentions of patients is increased by the impact of patient commitment to a health care provider, which, as evidenced by this study's findings, increases with patient's rising trust into a health care provider. Implications for theory and practice are discussed and further research directions are provided.

Public trust in the long-term care insurance pilot program in China: An analysis of mediating effects

“…We also found that satisfaction mediated the effect of health insurance awareness on trust in the LTCI program. This finding adds new knowledge to the literature which study mediates effect of satisfaction between perceived value and trust in public health insurance ( 21 ) and between healthcare service quality and trust in care providers ( 16 ).…”

“…Similarly, satisfied insurance enrollees tend to trust their health insurance programs ( 21 ). Increased customer satisfaction results in an increase in the perceived value of insurance programs and an increased willingness to participate in public insurance plans ( 16 ). Based on the positive association between satisfaction and trust in previous studies ( 16 , 21 , 40 ), we proposed the second hypothesis:…”

“…In addition, the relationships between awareness and satisfaction, and between satisfaction and trust, would suggest that an improved awareness of health insurance could encourage greater levels of trust through the indirect path of improved satisfaction. Several studies show that satisfaction was a valid mediator between trust and its associated factors such as perceived value ( 21 ) and service quality ( 16 ). Thus, we argued that the satisfaction with LTCI mediates the relationship between awareness and trust in the LTCI system.…”

“…First, public satisfaction with the healthcare system is one of the indicators used by the World Health Organization (WHO) to evaluate the quality of healthcare systems ( 14 , 15 ). Customer satisfaction has been the most frequently recognized pathway toward sustainable competitive advantage ( 16 ). Satisfaction represents an important dimension of the quality of a program.…”

Crisis management: the perspectives of physicians working in family physician teams in Lithuania

“…Although female physicians demonstrate a higher level of work satisfaction than males (Werdecker and Esch, 2021), this study found that satisfaction was dependent on the physician's age, work experience, and duration of employment in their current institution. Furthermore, patient satisfaction is conditional on positive patient-physician interactions and plays a key role in building long-term relationships (Rajić et al, 2021). This study found that work experience determined how respondents perceived patient satisfaction with the services provided by family medical institutions during the COVID-19 pandemic.…”