Determinants of patient’s satisfaction and predicting Patient’s willingness to return: a case from a Chinese town hospital
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School of Business |
Master's thesis
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Authors
Date
2019
Department
Major/Subject
Mcode
Degree programme
Information and Service Management (ISM)
Language
en
Pages
69+8
Series
Abstract
As the amount of hospitals increases drastically in China and the need for high quality medical care keeps rising, awareness has been raised for hospitals to maintain their standards by being aligned with national requirements as well as to continuously improve their service for patients. It has been estimated that nearly 75% of clinical cases are not properly diagnosed, treated or supervised afterwards in many developing countries. Because different patients have various needs or requests for medical service, it can be extremely tough for hospitals to satisfy every patient. In order to increase satisfaction level, it is essential to measure patients’ satisfaction not only in favor of the overall experience of patients, but also of hospital itself such as better presentation, more patient’s visits and better reputation. Patients’ satisfaction can be referred as patients’ feedback towards various aspects of their subjective dimensions of experience. With the results from patients, hospitals are able to identify which need to be improved, and then make corresponding decisions in pursuit for better services and quality based on patients’ desires. The purpose of the thesis is to discover the significant determinants influencing patients’ satisfaction and to predict the willingness to return in the case hospital. The case hospital in Shahu central hospital. In this thesis, I will mainly focus on the determinants related to the case hospital and demographical predictors. Regarding determinants concerning the case hospital, they include the level of care, tangibles, price, accessibility and corruption level, which are partially based on SERVQUAL model. Furthermore, the demographical predictors are comprised of gender, age, education level, socio-economic status and health conditions. In order to implement the research, a questionnaire is distributed to patients visiting the case hospital. Results are then analyzed with python using various models: regression analysis, Pearson correlation, decision tree and random forest. The results indicate that price, tangibles, accessibility, the level of professional care and interpersonal care and patients’ health conditions are of great significant to patients’ satisfaction level in the case hospital. Besides, price is negatively associated with patients’ satisfaction level, while other significant predictors show positive relationship with patients’ satisfaction level.Description
Thesis advisor
Liesiö, JuusoMalo, Pekka
Keywords
patients' satisfaction, SERVQUAL, Chinese health care system, linear regression, determinants, significance