The Relationship Between the Customer Relationship Management and Patients’ Loyalty to Hospitals

Abstract

Background and Aim:Customer Relationship Management (CRM) with its various components has been considered as a tool causing customers’ loyalty. The present study aims to investigate the relationship between the various components of customer relationship management and patients’ loyalty to the place of their treatment.Methods:This cross sectional and descriptive-analytical study was conducted among nurses and hospitalized patients in inpatient wards in selected hospitals in 2014. Using the stratified random sampling method, 224 valid and reliable researcher-drafted questionnaires were completed for CRM by nurses and 359 questionnaires were completed by patients for patients’ loyalty in the studied wards. Data were analyzed using the SPSS20 software.Results:There was no statistically significant relationship between the level of patients’ loyalty and organizational indicators, information technology and knowledge management (P Value>0.05). However, there was a statistically significant relationship between loyalty and the dimensions of the service process (P Value=0.04), human resources (P Value=0.002) and CRM (P Value=0.038). The strength of these relationships were 34, 40 and 36 percent, respectively all of which were positive.Conclusion:Customer Relationship Management is a tool for improving influencing factors on patients’ satisfaction and loyalty. Therefore, attempts to implement customer relationship management as a process for improving hospitals performance and improving communication between service providers in hospitals and customers leading to enhance patients’ loyalty should be taken into account by managers and policy makers in the health sectors.

A Way to Understand Inpatients Based on the Electronic Medical Records in the Big Data Environment

“…Scholars have investigated the role of patients to the hospital. The satisfaction and loyalty of patients can significantly influence the performance of healthcare providers [ 14 , 25 , 26 ]. Vogus and McClelland [ 14 ] discuss the changes from normal customers to patients and highlight that patient satisfaction and service quality are often difficult to achieve due to the risk and complexity.…”

“…Turner et al [ 27 ] also point out that it is difficult to achieve a continuous patient-hospital relationship. Therefore, it is necessary to apply customer relationship management in the area of patient management to enhance patient loyalty, eventually leading to high hospital performance [ 25 ]. Moreover, patient flow, the movement of patients in healthcare processes, is another important indicator for efficient and effective hospital management [ 28 , 29 ].…”

“…Hall [ 29 ] argues that a well-organized patient flow can reduce the delay in the delivery of healthcare service. Patients move through both clinical and operational processes could be very complex; thus a carefully planned and structured patient flow can reduce the congestion and increase the overall performance of the hospital [ 25 ]. Therefore, the role of patients is important in management practice in the hospital.…”

Promoção da satisfação e lealdade dos pacientes em instituições de saúde: revisão integrativa

“…Uma estratégia que tem sido adotada para compreender e antecipar-se às necessidades dos pacientes é o Customer Relationship Management (CRM) ou Gestão de Relacionamento com o Cliente (Spiller, 2015;Hajikhani, Tabibi, & Riahi, 2016).…”

“…Ao utilizar o CRM como um padrão de gestão de relacionamento com o paciente, orienta-se o seguimento das diretrizes: relacionamento personalizado; estímulo da lealdade do cliente à marca; conhecimento da base de clientes; análise das informações de mercado e direcionamento de acordo com o objetivo estratégico da instituição; antecipação das demandas dos clientes; investimento na velocidade de atendimento; aprimoramento dos processos de entrega dos serviços; estreitamento do relacionamento com os clientes de forma segmentada; além do aprendizado constante com os resultados alcançados (Spiller, 2015;Hajikhani et al, 2016).…”