Abstract:
Objectives
To determine the relationship between quality of medical services; physician’s consultation, information to patient, physical environment, perceived service costs, service provisioning and to calculate opportunity revenue for recommendation to relatives/ friends/ others. on patient satisfaction towards their loyalty.
Methods
This was a single-centre cross-sectional survey conducted in a private hospital. It was conducted between the month of April 2020 and August 2020. The target population was outpatients who received treatment or consultation at Nilai Medical Centre during the study period. Selection of
respondents was conducted using simple random sampling had been generated by auto-generated hospital database from 2,324 patients that visited outpatient from April until August 2020. Questionnaires were sent out to selected patients via e-mail due to recent pandemic which does
not allow interaction with patients physically. There were 209 questionnaires returned as the sample sizes for this study.
Results
A total of 209 respondents were involved in this study. Data that have been collected through questionnaires were used to test the model using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 25. The findings showed that physician’s consultation, information to patient,
physical environment and perceived service costs positively influence patients’ satisfaction and loyalty. Service provisioning processes, however, was not significantly influence patients’ satisfaction and loyalty. This study reconciles these discrepancies by providing a more comprehensive explanation to the patients’ loyalty. For this, a research model was developed to identify and evaluate the factors of the patients’ loyalty.
Conclusion
This study found that patients’ satisfaction mediates the relationship between physician consultation, information to patient, physical environment, perceived service costs and patient loyalty. Meanwhile, patients’ satisfaction plays a role on the relationship towards patient loyalty.
This study contributes towards a better understanding of the patients’ satisfaction in private healthcare industry particularly in Malaysia. Notably, the findings emphasize the importance of patients’ loyalty as a strategy to help private hospital increase their revenue. Therefore, the findings
from the study are useful for the private healthcare policy makers by providing high quality services, improving patients’ satisfaction, and ultimately promoting revisiting and recommending medical services to others.
Key words
Physician’s Consultation, Information to Patient, Physical Environment, Perceived Service Costs, Service Provisioning Processes, Satisfaction, Loyalty
