Research Projects Selected in FY2011
< Foundation-Oriented Service Science Research, Type B1 >
Research on Patient Satisfaction with Medical Care Services in Consideration of 'Benefit Delay' Effect
[] Project Leader
Kazuhiro FUJIMURA
Professor, Faculty of Economics, Kagawa University
[] Targets
- Developing a scale for measuring patient satisfaction with medical services that takes into account the “benefit delay” characterizing such services
- Due to the skewed relationships among patient satisfaction, real service quality, and patient participation resulting from the benefit delay, developing strategies for drawing out ideal relationships
[] Approach
- Devising a model of the perceived quality of medical services that incorporates the perspective of changes over time in quality elements and their importance as well as the perspectives of patients and medical practitioners, developing a scale for measuring patient satisfaction based on the model, and devising strategies for drawing out ideal relationships.
- In order to verify and improve the model, measurement scale, and strategies, conducting quality surveys and quantitative surveys of the patients and medical practitioners in a health care organization.
Benefit delay refers to the characteristic whereby a delivered service continues in effect even after the service delivery process is finished, with ongoing changes taking place. Medical service is a prime example of such a time-delayed service. Improving the quality of medical service and patient satisfaction requires proper assessment of their levels in a health care organization. Due to the benefit delay, however, estimation of patient satisfaction tends to be skewed, with a high likelihood that the real quality of medical service is not properly reflected in the patient’s experience of it. Moreover, since the benefit delay means patients may not be able to properly assess the real quality of the medical services, a fear is that their participation in the process will be hindered. Inasmuch as service is created through the collaboration of the service organization and customers, effective and efficient improvements in service quality, customer satisfaction, and productivity cannot be achieved by the service organization alone, by raising the quality and quantity of production resources and improving the capability of the organization for utilizing those resources. Also, it is essential to try to make customers participate (perform their roles) in the service delivery processes positively and properly. This research and development project aims to achieve the above objectives by solving the problems indicated.
